‘In Our Day’: Another relaxing reflection from Hong Sang-soo

Kim leads In Our Day as well, in which she plays Sangwon, another actress in a state of difficult transition. After returning to Seoul from abroad, she decides to leave acting behind, and temporarily stays with her friend Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and the latter's white Persian cat. She also entertains visits from a young cousin she hasn't seen in some time, Jisoo (Park Miso), who dreams of becoming an actress, and seeks her advice on where to begin.

Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated story unfolds in another apartment. The elderly poet Ujju (Ki Joobong), having found late-in-life success with Korean youth, is visited by a pair of young artists, documentary filmmaker Kijoo (Kim Seungyun) and aspiring actor Jaewon (Ha Seongguk), who similarly seek his wisdom.

As the film cuts casually back and forth between the two artists' sprawling conversations, Sangwon and Ujju become reflections of one another, both through their cynicism, as well as through their respective quirks and idiosyncrasies. The advice their starry-eyed young fans draw from them forces them to reflect on their own careers, as they're each made to confront the naïve enthusiasm that drove them towards their respective artforms in the first place.

The actress and the poet also feel distinctly reminiscent of the 42-year-old Kim and 63-year-old Hong, but any such literal interpretation does the characters a disservice. They're parts of a whole, and while that's certainly a romantic notion if they do indeed symbolize Kim and Hong, the result is a film comprising fleeting moments of repressed despondency—born from regret and uncertainty—that pierce the veil of their calm, withheld demeanors.

Hong's deceptively simple long takes, with occasional tilts and pans to follow his characters, are often punctuated by sudden moments of emotional potency. People speak in circles for so long, tip-toeing around what they actually want to say about their dreams and desires, that their ramblings eventually loop back around to dramatic beats defined by deep uncertainty.

The director’s signature languorous aesthetic is especially effective here, as an embodiment of quiet lethargy born of well-disguised inertia and paralyzing exhaustion. Sangwon gives into the temptation of sleeping in. Ujju reflects on vices he's long left behind, like cigarettes and alcohol. Drinks are a key component of Hong's movies, and as familiar viewers might expect, In Our Day similarly builds to scenes of casual imbibing that are as much about the alluring vibes as they are about revealing character during drunken moments.

Hong, who not only wrote and directed the film, but produced, photographed, scored, and edited it too, proves once again the immense and purposeful control he retains over every technical aspect of his work. The movie's lo-fi sound design, for instance, captures the hum of the cityscape at its most relaxing, as well as its most intrusive, and while the unpolished acoustics initially draw attention to themselves, they soon settle into a debilitating white noise, enhancing the characters’ ennui.

In Our Day is, like many of Hong's slice-of-life dramas, a film of familiar routines and casual rhythms. But it's also about the wistfulness and artistic anxieties they can disguise, which often lie dormant, just beneath the surface, until some unassuming interaction yanks them to the fore. It is, like most of Hong's work, a laid-back vibe of a movie—until the sudden moments it isn't.