Like You Know It All

Hong Sang-Soo's wry, comic accounts of the sex-war seem less rigidly structured than they used to, but there's still a keen analytical intelligence at work not far below the surface. Art-house director Ku Kyung-Nam is doing jury-service at a small festival when he runs into his long-lost buddy Bu, now happily married and living locally. Ku visits his friend's home for dinner and gets very drunk on soju. Next day he's surprised to get a message from Bu telling him to get lost; apparently he behaved badly towards Bu's wife. A fortnight later Ku is in Jeju Island to give a talk when he meets his college senior, now a famous painter - who turns out to be married to a woman Ku himself once dated and abandoned. Two parallel situations, but generating different emotions and with very different outcomes. The wild card in play is Ms Gong, programmer of the film festival, who has to look after Ku but has at best ambivalent feelings about him and his work. Spoken words and unspoken sentiments ricochet through a series of exquisitely embarrassing situations; female uncertainty meets male inadequacy and there's nowhere to hide.