The Woman Who Ran

After years apart, a woman visits two old friends. In the space between old intimacy and new distance, conversations unfold that let the past shine through again and again.

For the first time in five years, Gam-hee is travelling without her husband. She visits two old friends in order to catch up. As always with Hong Sang-soo, who already honoured the IFFMH twenty years ago and has since become one of Korea’s most celebrated directors, there is a lot of talk in mostly quiet settings. The naturalistic dialogues and script consistently transcend cinematic clichés. Even though the tone remains cheerful, every seemingly banal sentence is loaded with the ghost of past decisions whose consequences are still felt today. Incidentally, men only play a role as a conversation topic; when they actually enter the picture, it’s with their backs to the camera. And then there is a cat, who is given an almost sublime moment and ruthlessly exposes the absurdity of the whole human drama.

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