Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

Hong's third feature is built on the same narrative intricacies and ambiguities as before, but it extends the uncertainty principle into the areas of memory and subjective consciousness. Soojung (Lee), a bright young woman who has been saving her virginity for the right man, is quite close to her married boss Youngsoo (Moon) but finds herself more attracted to his gallery-owning friend Jaehoon (Jung), eventually promising to go to bed with him. The film is in five chapters; the first, third and fifth detail events on the day Soojung is supposed to surrender her virginity to Jaehoon in a Seoul hotel room. The longer second and fourth chapters offer different and mutually contradictory takes on the earlier stages in their relationship, reflecting the different perceptions, memories and fantasies of the three central characters. Often very funny and always spot-on in its observation of middle-class mores and secrets.