Korea’s poet laureate of infantile male intellectuals and the women who bewitch them delivers one of his most appealing recent efforts in Our Sunhi. Winner of the director prize in Locarno, Hong’s 15th feature delights as it orchestrates the seriocomic ping-ponging of a canny young woman and her three equally hapless suitors.
Wonderfully played by the gamine Jung Yu-mi (in her fifth collaboration with Hong), Sunhi is a recent film-school grad first seen returning to her alma mater to solicit a recommendation letter from her former teacher, Professor Choi (Kim Sang-joong). There’s just one caveat: he can only write an ‘honest’ letter.
While grabbing a beer at a nearby chicken restaurant, Sunhi encounters her ex-boyfriend Munsu (Hong regular Lee Sun-kyun). As the beer flows, it becomes all too clear that Munsu still hankers for his ex. The plot thickens with the introduction of curmudgeonly fellow film-maker Jaehak (Jung Jae-young). Hong has a lot of fun orchestrating these various comings and goings which, as in a classic farce, revolve around the idea of all three men pursuing the same woman without realizing it.
Scott Foundas
Variety
‘another pleasurable, loquacious and low-key film’
The Hollywood Reporter
Winner, Silver Leopard, Locarno Film Festival
