The film shows the meeting between a veteran actress and a filmmaker in the narrow and sometimes bucolic streets of downtown Seoul.
It is logical that the most linear of Hong Sang-soo’s latest films has to do with death, that end that does not allow detours. It is also the fact that it is the only one that uses digital to saturate the colors of reality, so that a whole series of encounters with the banal become an experience between luminous and strange, as if the images were the product of someone who He has learned to look at the world with different eyes. Those eyes are those of a retired actress, who has returned to Korea after her voluntary exile in the United States to meet her sister and a film director who wants to offer her a role.
In ‘Front of you’, dreams, interruptions and ellipses are diluted in favor of a series of vignettes of everyday life that, as always, explode into a thousand pieces in front of a few shots, not of soju but of Chinese liquor, in a scene that is, without cuts, a whole tour de force of tones and registers. It is there where the revelation of a secret induces another level of communication that it makes us think of the kindness of strangers until Hong ends his precious morality tale with a lucid laugh.
For lovers of beautiful and fragile miniatures
The best: its substantial variation to the productive and repeated narrative formulas of Hong’s cinema.
The worst: behind the apparent banality of some situations, their importance cannot be seen.
DATA SHEET
Address: Hong Sang-soo Distribution: Lee Hyeyoung, Cho Yunhee, Kwon Haehyo, Shin Seokho, Kim Saebyeok, Ha Seungguk, Seo Younghwa, Lee Eunmi, Kang Yiseo, Kim Siha Country: South Korea Year: 2021 Release date: 07-14-2022 Gender: Drama Script: Hong Sang-soo Duration: 85 minutes
Synopsis: After several years living in the United States, Sangok returns to Seoul to reunite with his sister and nephew. As she gets used to life in Korea, she discovers new places, walks through a park or looks for the old house where she grew up, now turned into a store. Although she hasn’t worked as an actress for many years, Sangok decides to meet a famous film director younger than her, who asks her to take part in her next film. Sangok lives life in the present, but despite her desire to return to acting, she keeps a secret that makes him doubt her.
Source: Fotogramas

Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.