In Berlin with woman at center of scandal

Director Hong Sang-soo is making his third foray to the Berlinale, or Berlin International Film Festival, with the film “On the Beach at Night Alone,” which stars his alleged lover Kim Min-hee.

The seemingly autobiographical film features Kim as the lead character who wanders a seaside town in torment over an affair with a married man, according to Internet Movie Database, though its international distributor Finecut did not confirm the plot.

The film is scheduled to be screened on Feb. 16. Hong will attend a press conference after the screening with lead actress Kim expected to be in attendance.

“On the Beach” is Hong’s 19th feature film and third entry to Berlin after “Night and Day” (2008) and “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” (2013). It is one of 23 films in the main competition category at the film fest, which runs from Thursday to Feb. 19.

Whether the director, 55, and actress, 34, will show up together on the red carpet has been the subject of much speculation. If they do, it would mark their first public appearance together since local entertainment outlet TV Report broke the news of the extramarital affair in June last year.

Neither party has officially commented on the reports.

The affair allegedly began in 2015 when the two were filming “Right Now, Wrong Then” -- incidentally, a story of a married film director falling in love with a timid artist -- prompting Hong to leave his wife of 30 years in September that year, the report said.

The couple subsequently shot two more films together, including “On the Beach.”

Hong began divorce proceedings, still ongoing, from his wife in December last year.

The latest film additionally features Song Seon-mi, Jung Jae-young and Kwon Hae-hyo. 

Low-key but turbulent

Since his directorial debut at 35 with “The Day a Pig Fell into the Well” in 1996, Hong has been critically acclaimed both in an out of Korea for his mellow portrayals of seemingly mundane everyday life and relationships, though most of his works have not been commercial hits.

He is known for the stripped-down, casual style of his films, mostly small-budget art house, and numerous scenes featuring drinking and chain-smoking.

“They live modest but turbulent lives of great emotional intensity, but little grand drama,” the New Yorker said of Hong’s characters in a June 2016 article when the Museum of the Moving Image ran a retrospective of the director’s works.

“Their artistic dreams fuse with vanity, their romantic desires are inseparable from egotism, yet their complexities aren’t psychological but, rather, existential.”

Hong has nabbed prizes from numerous international film festivals after winning Korea’s Blue Dragon Film Awards for Best New Director for his debut feature.

In 2010, he received the Un Certain Regard prize for “Hahaha,” a tale of two friends swapping memories on travel. He won the best director award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2013 for “Our Sunhi,” a film about a female film student who attempts to charm out a favorable recommendation letter from a professor.

The 2016 film “Yourself and Yours,” another probe into romantic relationships, drinking and the multifarious charms of an eccentric woman, won Hong the best director award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Having opened in local theaters after news of the scandal hit, the film received an icy response from the local audience.

The annual film fest held in the German capital is one of the world’s most reputed, founded in West Berlin in 1951.

Four Korean films will be screened in the Berlinale’s Forum Section: “The Aimless Bullet” (1961) by Yu Hyun-mok and “The Last Witness” (1980) by Lee Doo-yong, “Autumn, Autumn,” a 2016 feature by Jang Woo-jin, and “Twelve,” a 2016 short by Cha Jea-min.

“Becoming Who I Was,” a 2016 documentary about the boy Tibetan monk by Moon Chang-yong and Jeon Jin, will be shown in the Generation section.

By Rumy Doo (doo@heraldcorp.com)