[HanCinema's Film Review] "in water"

At first glance, "in water" seems to be a mean-spirited parody. Seong-mo (played by Shin Seok-ho) is a director who's using all of his savings to film a short movie on Jeju Island. His two fellow travelers, Sang-gook (played by Ha Seong-guk) and Nam-hee (played by Kim Seung-yun) don't seem to like him all that much. All three of these characters are fairly boring. The bulk of the movie rather bewilderingly is shot out of focus, rendering all three of our stars as vague blurs.

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But there is a method to all this madness, which is to showcase Seong-mo's ongoing depression. Along these lines, "in water" is surprisingly subtle as far as Hong Sang-soo films go. The fact that we can't really tell whether Sang-gook and Nam-hee are actually Seong-mo's friends is part of the point. Seong-mo doesn't really know either. Are they humoring him? Did they just come along for the free snacks? How serious are any of them about film?

Seong-mo tries to be as serious as he can. Yet when questioned about what exactly he wants to accomplish, Seong-mo admits to wanting glory and recognition, while not sounding entirely all that sure whether such a feat is attainable even if his movie is any good. These are bleak times for film, and short film in particular. HanCinema doesn't even publish short film reviews anymore. It's not that they're bad, the target audience is just too absurdly small since they usually only play at film festivals.

Seong-mo is really just struggling for meaning any place he can find it, and making a short film is at least a goal, even if it doesn't appear to be a very good one. In one inspired bit of loneliness, Seong-mo calls his presumed ex-girlfriend (voiced by Kim Min-hee) who's in Malaysia for reasons she doesn't bother to explain and he doesn't ask. The request Seong-mo has seems more motivated by it being an excuse to talk to her than it actually being all that relevant to the movie.

Given his personality as one of the earliest internationally known South Korean film directors, "in water" inevitably begs the question of what commentary Hong Sang-soo is trying to make with this project. Despite his relative fame, Hong Sang-soo has gone increasingly low budget in recent years. The weird result of this is that his films are somehow less pretentious, not really about self-pity as about desperately trying to avoid wallowing in self-pity and not really succeeding.

Take away the Hong Sang-soo brand name, and "in water" isn't really that different from the typical millennial produced independent film in South Korea these days. It's slightly more metatextual, in that we're led to believe that the in-focus scenes are the movie-within-a-movie, easier to grasp and comprehend than Seong-mo's actual life, particularly from Seong-mo's own perspective. Perhaps only Hong Sang-soo could get away with such a narrative structure. Although more significantly, only Hong Sang-soo could get such a movie to play at international film festivals.

Written by William Schwartz

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"in water" is directed by Hong Sang-soo, and features Shin Seok-ho, Ha Seong-guk, Kim Seung-yun, Kim So-ryung, Kim Min-hee. Release date in Korea: 2023/04/12.