new wave films
In Front of your Face (DVD & online)
A film by Hong Sangsoo
Synopsis
In Front of Your Face suggests that perhaps the most important things in this life are also the most immediate.
After years living abroad, former actress Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung) is back in Seoul, staying with her sister Jeongok (Cho Yunhee) in her high-rise apartment. Whilst Sangok becomes re-accustomed to life in Korea, the sisters have a lie-in, enjoy breakfast in a cafe and visit a restaurant owned by Jeongok's son. But as the detail of Sangok's day accrue (a spill on her blouse, an encounter at her childhood home), it becomes clear that there is much she is not revealing. These mysterious circumstances may have something to do with her decision to meet with film director Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo) to discuss her return to acting.
She meets the director in a bar that’s closed, so order in a Chinese meal, plus ample Chinese liquor, where they both flirt and make unfulfillable promises.
Lee Hyeyoung is very well known in Korea, but this was her first role for the prolific Hong Sangsoo.
85 min/South Korea/Korean with English subtitles/2021/Cert 12
World Premiere – Cannes Premieres – Cannes Film Festival
Where It's On
Trailer
Director — Hong Sangsoo
Hong Sangsoo was born in Seoul, Korea on 25th October 1960. He studied at Chungang University, California College of Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sangsoo made his first feature film in 1996. Since then, he has made 27 feature films and a five short films. He has recently had an extensive retrospective of his films screened at the Lincoln Centre in New York City, programmed by leading critic and writer Dennis Lim. He is currently teaching at Konkuk University in Seoul.
Filmography
2022 WALK UP
2022 THE NOVELIST'S FILM
2021 IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE
2021 INTRODUCTION
2020 THE WOMAN WHO RAN
2019 HOTEL BY THE RIVER
2018 GRASS
2018 CLAIRE’S CAMERA
2017 THE DAY AFTER
2017 ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE
2016 YOURSELF AND YOURS
2015 RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN
2014 HILL OF FREEDOM
2013 OUR SUNHI
2013 NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON
2012 IN ANOTHER COUNTRY
2011 THE DAY HE ARRIVES
2010 OKI’S MOVIE
2010 HAHAHA
2009 LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL
2008 NIGHT AND DAY
2006 WOMAN ON THE BEACH
2005 A TALE OF CINEMA
2004 WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN
2002 TURNING GATE
2000 VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS
1998 THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE
1996 THE DAY A PIG FELL INTO A WELL
Cast & Credits
| CREW | ||
| Written, Directed and Produced by | Hong Sangsoo | |
| Production Manager, Stills Photographer | Kim Minhee | |
| Production Assistant | Lee Soyoung | |
| Cinematography, Editing, Music | Hong Sangsoo | |
| Sound | Seo Jihoon | |
| Production | Jeonwonsa Film Co. | |
| CAST | ||
| Lee Hyeyoung | ||
| Cho Yunhee | ||
| Kwon Haehyo | ||
| Shin Seokho | ||
| Kim Saebyeok | ||
| Ha Seungguk | ||
| Seo Younghwa | ||
| Lee Eunmi | ||
| Kang Yiseo | ||
| Kim Siha | ||
| South Korea 2021 / 85 minutes / 1:1.85 /2.0 | ||
| BBFC cert 12A |
The Critics
★★★★
"Quiet cine-literate magic from Korean auteur. Shot with pleasing simplicity and an unhurried flow…a subtle portrait of emotional resilience with its female protagonist seeking to remain mindful in the face of life’s transience.’ Hong has carried on, making fascinating, subtle, humane films with the bare minimum…Once again, he casts a tender, sympathetic gaze on a female character
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“A colourful and relatable work that crystallises many of Hong’s best tropes. As always, Hong’s style and form is imperious, with naturalistic conversations captured in organic, free-flowing long takes – creating a transfixing atmosphere in which the actors’ exceptional craft is laid bare.”
James Balmont, Another Magazine
★★★★★
“Packed with emotion and an underlying reflective quality...the film just gives you so much to unpack. Repeat viewing essential. This is another subtle jewel, wise and charming, insouciant yet measured, and somehow squaring the circle between the overwhelming sadness of lost time and the glint of eternity in a passing instant.”
Trevor Johnston, Little White Lies
★★★★
"An ex actress's return to Seoul is beautific and drunkenly raw, in Hong Sangsoo's latest...
Hong takes in the solid geometric strangeness of Seoul's proliferating tower blocks, too, and human awkardness grits the grace. It's pure pleasure to watch his people."
Nick Hasted, The Arts Desk
“A gentle pleasure... a typically meditative study from Korean director Hong Sang. Lee Hye-yeong is mesmerising as a former actor...”
Wendy Ide, The Observer
“Hong’s cinema appears on the surface to be slight, yet there’s something deeply affecting about it. Although it’s set up and staged for the camera, it feels very down to earth and ordinary, just like real life. No other living director of who I’m aware does anything quite like Hong, his films these days are something very special. Like much of Hong’s recent output, this is a film to be cherished.”Jeremy Clarke, Jeremy C Processing.com
★★★★★
"A typically minimalist outing, director Hong’s film is a devastating drama whose affect creeps up on the audience so quietly that it is barely noticeable until after the final blow has landed.
A captivating film of deep emotional power; like weeds slowly cracking the pavement above, its movements in isolation are barely felt but its effects are profound.”
Christopher Machell, Cinevue
★★★★
“Shot with pleasing simplicity and an unhurried flow…a subtle portrait of emotional resilience with its female protagonist seeking to remain mindful in the face of life’s transience."
Tom Dawson, Total Film
“Small is beautiful and luminous in In Front of Your Face (Dangsin-Eolgul-Apeseo), the 11th film of South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo to be invited to Cannes…
"Typical of Hong’s work, the laid-back anti-storytelling lets daily life flow slowly by without incident, until a revelatory twist in the last act gives the film its meaning.”
Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
“The substitution of Chinese liquor for soju is only the most minor change in Hong Sangsoo's latest, subtly different delight...…an unexpected peal of utterly genuine, soul-repairing laughter."
…wonderful, winsome…”
Jessica Kiang, Variety
“Prolific Korean auteur, Hong Sangsoo, delights with his second film of 2021, a poignant and typically minimalist story set beneath the shifting skyline of Seoul.”
"One of Hong's most moving films...a love letter to Seoul and a superb character study of the beatific presence of mind and body with which one woman faces death...tinged with the beauty and sadness of transience."
Becca Voelcker, Sight & Sound
“The film is an obsessive rumination on the little squabbles and inconveniences and pleasures that add up to the bulk of our lives.”
Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
“Audiences bruised by the pandemic clearly need the escapism of F9 and other tentpoles; but at a time of fragility, they also need reminding of the lambent beauty of our everyday world that Hong delivers here.
"In Front Of Your Face feels as if the director is testing the limits of how far he can pare a story back while retaining an intricate series of echoes, hints and suggestions.”
Lee Marshall, Screen International
“In Front of Your Face" is one of the South Korean director's most open films of late, poignant in its use of a simple structure to touch on the eminently difficult question of how to live happily between past, present and future.”
Elena Lazic, The Playlist
“The great Hong Sangsoo…glories in the power of the cinema. The overwhelming mystery of life in the presence of death inspires Hong to new heights of imaginative inspiration and reveals all the more clearly the essence of his artistry.”"Intimate and fluid...(a) serenely passionate deployment of art as resistance to mortality."
Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Joshua Brunsting, Criterion Cast
“One of Hong’s most emotionally generous films. In a career full of small triumphs, it’s a beautiful gesture of family love, of non-specific spiritual awakening, and self-possession meant to create outward waves of goodness. And it comes down to Sangok’s words, repeated throughout, until they take root and grow: “If I can see what’s in front of my face, then I’m not afraid.”
Dave White, The Wrap
K.F. Watanabe, Screen Slate
“Humble but winning outing from Hong…(an)intimate portrait of an aging movie actress, Sangok (Lee Hye-young) …ends with a fantastic extended restaurant scene between Lee and Kwon Hae-hyo as Jaewon, a director from her past.”
Max Maller, The Chicago Reader
Links
Download photo set
Download press book
Interview with Hong Sangsoo at the Lincoln Center
Download quad poster hi-res jpg
Download Pro-res trailer
Trailer on YouTube - embed or link
Download trailer mp4
Download clips for social media
Download international press book
Bookings & Press
For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.