Tale of Cinema

Another of Hong’s deceptively small, multi-layered films, this starts off depicting what turns out to be a suicidal relationship of a young couple. We then realise that what we have been watching is a film-within-a-film, and a rather odd young film-maker – who was at film school with the director of the movie we and he have been watching – latches on to the actress who was in that film… Will life imitate art, or history repeat itself, or what? Such are the questions raised by Hong’s movie, which succeeds both as character study and as a wry meditation both on the relationship between reality and representation and on the passing of time. It’s a delicate film, as discreet in its observations as its predecessors, but no less enjoyable or impressive for all that.