Woman is the Future of Man (DVD)

Synopsis

Like Wong Kar-wai and Tsai Ming-liang, New Korean Cinema luminary Hong Sangsoo marries Asian and European sensibilities. Michael Atkinson in The Village Voice cannily dubbed him "the love child Antonioni and Hou Hsiao-hsien never had," while Woman Is The Future Of Man could be described as a postmodern, post-romantic riff on Rashomon and Jules And Jim, refracting an unstable ménage à trois through two misaligned perspectives.

The film’s ruefully comic view of modern love centers on the Mutt-and-Jeff dynamic between two mismatched buddies - tall, placid art professor Munho and short, volatile filmmaker Hunjoon - who share an inconsistent passion for the same woman, artist-turned-bar-girl Sunhwa. Shuttling between the summery past and the snowy present, the two recently reunited friends drunkenly recall their abortive liaisons with Sunhwa, littered with broken promises, fumbled opportunities, and sexual gaucheries (no one but Hong captures the indelicacies of the bedroom with such wincingly unsanitized candor). Employing a hyper-observant camera style acutely sensitive to quicksilver shifts in the emotional weather, Woman Is The Future Of Man is a wry, wistful discourse on the immaturity of men, the fickleness of memory, and the elusiveness of love.