Ray Pride

An increasingly rare pleasure, at film festivals and cinematheques, is to discover a cinematic sensibility you never expected and to find it fully formed with several movies ready to prove it. Such was the case with Hang Sang-soo, the South Korean director (who attended the School of the Art Institute), when I got to meet Hang and see all four of his features in as many days at a 2002 retrospective in Thessaloniki, Greece (the quartet hit New York in November 2003). I'd seen his 2000 "The Bride Stripped Bare," one of his bifurcated narratives at another festival that year. But his first feature, 1997's "The Day a Pig Fell Into a Well"--an absurd, cryptic yet lovely title Hang finally admitted is drawn from the recesses of a John Cheever story--is a sorrowful, post-Altman modernist roundelay of four men and women whose lives intersect in ways that we, as viewers, can ultimately decipher, but they cannot, with humorous, drunken, and eventually, murderous results. Hang is a master of the telling, mysterious image, without the strangeness of his inspirations ever becoming perfumed or precious. His most recent, "Turning Gate," playing this weekend, is, in some ways, a sad sack stalker story, but Hang's fervent belief in the strange strands and twines of all our lives suggest a need for wariness, and a fear of any manner of reunification.

"Turning Gate" opens the retrospective this weekend at Facets. See Short Runs for details.

(2004-01-06)

Also by Ray Pride

Uniform code
While I've read quibbles about the plot machinations of Vadim Perelman's debut feature, "House of Sand and Fog," no one's dared complain about the acting
(2003-12-30)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-12-30)

Tip of the Week
Kurosawa drew from work both Eastern and Western throughout his career, and this tale, finding Toshiro Mifune as a vagabond samurai who sells his services to both sides of a battle in a small town, is utterly indebted to Dashiell Hammett
(2003-12-23)

Wind done gone
"Cold Mountain" is epic yet intimate, strange and shell-shocked
(2003-12-23)

Father figuring
(2003-12-23)

Short Runs
(2003-12-23)

Salud
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-16)

Sirkis people
(2003-12-16)

Holiday Movies
(2003-12-16)

Short Runs
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-10)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment