Screened as part of NZIFF 2014

Our Sunhi 2013

U ri Sunhi

Directed by Hong Sang-soo World

The prolific Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo delivers another droll tale of romantic crisis in academia. His latest follows Sunhi, a young graduate, who inadvertently rekindles old flames on a visit back to her alma mater.

South Korea In Korean with English subtitles
88 minutes DCP

Director, Screenplay

Producer

Kim Kyounghee

Photography

Park Hongyeol

Editor

Hahm Sungwon

Music

Jeong Yongjin

With

Jung Yumi (Sunhi)
,
Lee Sunkyun (Donghyun)
,
Kim Sangjoong (Munsu)
,
Jung Jaeyoung (Jaehak)
,
Ye Jiwon (Joohyun)
,
Lee Minwoo (Sangwoo)

Awards

Best Director
,
Locarno International Film Festival 2013

Festivals

Locarno
,
Toronto
,
Vancouver
,
London 2013
,
San Francisco 2014

Elsewhere

Is there, anywhere in the world, a more perceptive or droll observer of male vanity at play in academia than the prolific Korean director Hong Sang-soo? “Hong’s new comedy of manners shows three men orbiting around an elusive young woman who seems quite capable of getting ahead without much help from any of them. Sunhi is an almost-dropout in her mid-20s who decides to try for graduate school in the US. She asks Professor Choi for a reference letter but doesn’t like what it says about her personality; she appeals to him for a rethink/rewrite. Meanwhile she runs into two other guys who dote on her: her needy ex-boyfriend Munsu and her introverted college senior Jaehak, who has left his wife to live alone. Much advice flows between them all, most forcefully when drink is taken. But Hong is amused to observe how circular it all is: how platitudes get recycled from one conversation to another, and how most of it anyway falls on deaf ears.” — Tony Rayns

“Another dryly comic and acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy.” — Film Comment Selects