We never quite learn the source of the disconnect between the two women. “Now, I only read what I really like,” she says, and we can’t help wondering if Junhee’s novels fall into that category. The women haven’t seen each other in some years, during which time Sewon moved away from Seoul without telling Junhee - a former writer herself, she has decided to give it up, settling on a life of reading books instead. Taken off-guard, Sewon sits down with her for coffee, and a pained, unspoken backstory shimmers through like a watermark in their halting conversation. The first in the film’s leisurely carousel of encounters sets the tone, as Junhee arrives in an unfamiliar commuter town some way outside Seoul, and turns up unannounced at the bookstore café run by her estranged friend Sewon (Seo Younghwa).
(It’s not a large one: As in much of his recent work, the writer-director also assumes sole producing, editing, lensing and scoring credit.)
One hopes she is now, like co-star and production manager Kim Minhee, a permanent member of the Hong company. As Junhee, she is again a fount of complicated, initially internalized but eventually betrayed feeling, emerging first in sharp, subtle gestures and later in unbottled torrents of rage and regret. The most welcome common factor between the two, however, is returning actor Lee Hyeyoung, a revelation to many following a long career stretch in Korean TV.
SWEET SIXTEEN MOVIE RECAP SERIES
Survivors include his husband, Rodrigo son Rueben nephews Jeffrey and Mark and a cousin, Dante.Superficially, at least, the previous Hong work onto which “The Novelist’s Film” can most obviously be mapped is last year’s superb Cannes entry “In Front of Your Face.” Both are portraits of a middle-aged female artist of some renown, away from home, shuffling between a series of old and new acquaintances, who gradually tease out from her some measure of self-effacing truth. He moved into production design in the mid-1990s. Sole then helmed Tanya’s Island (1980), starring Prince cohort Vanity, and Pandemonium (1982), a horror spoof with a cast that included Tommy Smothers, Carol Kane and Eileen Brennan.
SWEET SIXTEEN MOVIE RECAP HOW TO
In his review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that Sole “has a brilliant touch for the macabre,” and Vincent Candy in The New York Times noted that the filmmaker “knows how to direct actors, how to manipulate suspense and when to shift gears.” Sole had seen Shields, then 10, in a Vogue ad and cast her as the first actor in his sophomore feature. Sheppard) who becomes the prime suspect in the brutal murder of her younger sister (Shields) on the day of her First Communion and in a series of stabbings that follow.
Sole rebounded with Alice, Sweet Alice, first released under the title Communion, then released again as Holy Terror after Shields had gained stardom with her turns in Pretty Baby (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980).Īlice, Sweet Alice, also mainly shot in Paterson, centers on a troubled 12-year-old girl (Paula E.
He wound up with a one-year suspended sentence and a fine. Then, Sole was indicted for interstate transportation of pornography when his film was shown in Oklahoma City. In 1973, a county prosecutor charged Sole and Deep Sleep actors Joseph Rose and Kim Pope with violations of New Jersey’s fornication law. Critic's Appreciation: William Hurt, Dreamboat With a Soul