Northwest Film Forum

Winner of the Golden Leopard, the top prize at the 68th Locarno International Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s latest film Right Now, Wrong Then is a study in honesty, sincerity, and awkwardly humorous encounters. Film director Ham Chun-su (Jung Jae-young) has been asked to present a film at a festival in Suwon, but a schedule change has left him with a whole day to kill. Drinking coffee in front of a palace, a woman catches his eye: Yoon Hee-jung (Kim Min-hee), a painter and former model who's never seen one of his films, but is nonetheless drawn to his fame. They end up spending the day together. But then, at the exact midpoint of the film, the narrative resets, replaying the day with subtle and overt differences, suggesting new meaning in the spaces in between.

  

“Before shooting I try to observe as much as I can,” Sang-soo Hong has said. “I don't want to work with my strong intention, because if you work with a strong intention I think what you do is you repeat what you've heard and what you've seen in the past ... I need something new, really unexpected things happen every day. Every day something new has to happen, that way I feel alive and want to work.”

 

Is any meeting truly unique? Does the nature of a connection really hinge on specific moments? And are we actually different people in different situations?

 

“Together, the two parts make a radical fiction about the crucial role of imagination in lived experience.” - Richard Brody, The New Yorker

 

“As ever with this acute observer of human foibles in the game of romance, Hong manages to draw blood with the most drolly genteel of means.” - Kenji Fujishima, The Playlist