The Woman Who Ran (2020)

 

Director: Hong Sang-Soo

Screenplay: Hong Sang-Soo

Cast: Kim Min-hee as Gam-hee; Seo Young-hwa as Young-soon; Song Seon-mi as Su-young; Kim Sae-byuk as Woo-jin; Lee Eun-mi as Young-jin; Kwon Hae-hyo as Mr. Jung; Shin Seok-ho as Cat Man; Ha Seong-guk as Young Poet

Canon Fodder

I mean, our consciousness can easily interact with cows.

Returning to Hong Sang-Soo, even if the film is made by a male filmmaker, this is certainly a nice tonic from any macho bravado. The Woman Who Ran, as a series of vignettes following Gam-hee (regular collaborator Kim Min-hee) as she meets up with female friends, is entirely about the female voice. When men do appear they are annoyed "robber" cats are being fed, stalking someone or from an ended relationship that still causes friction.

Deceptively, Sang-Soo is a distinct auteur with his own voice. The issue is that his style, minimal camera movement and long scenes of conversation, is a style many have followed suit with too. The reason why Sang-Soo is distinct is that, once he started to be prolific in his films, he developed a repetitive series of obsessions with films which developed their own rhythm and arguably their own world. His cinema really works if you are able to see many films from them, each within themselves vignettes, and likewise this is the same.

Deceptively as well, there is seemingly little under the surface with The Woman Who Ran, which in many ways proves a greater power. The titular woman is presumably Gam-hee, but she has not fled anyone. She is, for the first time in her married life, separate from her husband who has had to travel for a special event. In place of this, she has decided to meet up with women she is friends with or knows. That in itself is a surprisingly refreshing result as many of them are older women or figures remotely alien to any project, usually dreaded, from other male directors who can sometimes go for stereotypes.

The opening sequence will be a make or break but is certainly something special to witness, even in Sang-Soo's career, for how relaxed and sweet it is. Three women bond and hanging out, wanting to become vegetarians, admitting they think cows have more beautiful eyes than humans, but still liking meat. Saying how macho roosters are, pecking the feathers off the back of hens' necks in the coup their neighbours have, which reads as having a greater depth in hinting as the film progresses. It also passes the Bechdel test but in a way that does not feel contrived. I have been hesitant about about the test, though it comes from a justifiable wish to have positive female figures in cinema, entirely because attempting to simplify the need and depictions in a test can itself muddy the issues of even good representations. Sang-Soo himself even in the film does not necessarily think of himself as being a feminist here, despite the positive female characters he has, done on purpose when one of the characters is an obnoxious and selfish male director like a self-deprecating stand-in.

There is also a little bit of new technique being hinted at by Sang-Soo even if it might be missed. Certainly he does not change his style a lot, as one of the only distinct things he does with the film technically is his beloved zoom lens, but using security cameras and having characters (and the viewers) see events through them is an interesting touch. The film, unlike others, does not play with subjective reality. "Seemingly" straight forward, it however finds different ways to play with the viewer. The act of cutting up apples to offer to Gam-hee is repeated by two people, and with a pleasing touch, the film Gam-hee goes to see in the final act is entered by us for the end credits, on an idyllic beach with the end credits over them. If there are hints of drama and turmoil, those segments with the security cameras or screens-within-screens offer a fascinating new touch for Sang-Soo as a filmmaker, prominently that when before he would have his characters expose their emotions through too much alcohol being consumed, this alongside changing the dynamic of his films' in look also hints at the layers around Gam-hee. She merely plays the watcher of other peoples' lives and their complications. Be it the young woman living in the basement of the apartment complex she first visits, a lone figure with her own concerns and issues, to the one dynamic moment of the film for Gam-hee herself of accidentally bumping into an ex who is now an old friend's husband, an older man, which leads to a tense moment at Cafe Emu at an art gallery/cinema.

Beyond this however, this is one of his most pleasing films. Whether the greater depths which need to be picked at - which is always been a bugbear in terms of Sang-Soo being now more readily available in his films but not for public purchase with ease - one thing for certain is that, emphasising women here, the film has a drastic and compelling reward. This is cinema with a compelling interest, and it is telling, as he was already doing so in his previous work, men are usually not great people in the slightest. One exception is Gam-hee's husband we never see or hear from, only that they have had a great relationship, something which drastically contrasts the unfortunate case for one friend, an older woman who had a one night stand with a significantly younger male poet only for him to keep hanging outside his door.

To try to consider the film in more detail, certainly this is a project which, by itself, would grow for a viewer the more they picked at it. Certainly for myself, this will be the case, though arguably the MVP in terms of scenes, in the conversation with the neighbour who wishes for two women to stop feeding cats and prioritising them over human beings, is Sang-Soo's trademark zoom suddenly going to a cat sat in the left hand corner of the frame outside an apartment, licking itself nonchalantly and yawning. Like the bar keeper in Yourself and Yours (2016), also watching on as the drama unfolded around him like the cat in this film made four years later, Sang-Soo as I go on with his filmography, as an auteur beloved by art house critic, is yet someone I am loving for the little pleasures and lightness of touch more whilst appreciating his great craft. Here definitely, the zoom lens is used perfectly for a feline figure in an almost comically inspired punch line.