‘In Our Day’ Review: Hong Sang-soo Murmurs Sweet Little Somethings About Life’s Unseen Connections

variety.com:

Jessica Kiang Let’s not be quite so declarative as to insist there are only two types of cinephile, but among the many varieties that exist, there are those who have never managed to connect with Hong Sang-soo‘s ongoing movie project, and those who can watch a minutes-long sequence of Kim Min-hee petting and feeding an already portly cat, and think ecstatically “This is cinema!” The former type will know by now to steer wide clear of “In Our Day,” which will look to them like yet another reinvention of Hong’s eternal mandala-wheel of talky two-shots, unadorned aesthetics and glancing, enigmatic, echoing themes.

The latter type will love it for much the same reasons, and may even find themselves surprised by a film that, while not as robust in construction as recent career highlight “Walk Up,” does work in new elements, amongst so much that is welcomingly familiar.

One obvious new development is intertitles, which punctuate the film with terse little descriptions of its two main characters’ states of mind.

So before we meet well-known actress Sang-won (Kim Min-Hee), we’re told she’s reliant on her friend Jang-soo (Song Sun-mi) but that she’s lately begun to feel like “she can only really rely on herself.” And introducing the previously hard-drinking, heavy-smoking poet Hong Ui-ju (Ki Joo-bong), a title informs us that his work has found a young following recently, though he himself is questioning his place in the world.