As industry guests enjoy the Berlinale from home this year, eagle-eyed viewers will take pleasure in spotting a familiar location in the latest film from South Korean auteur and festival-regular Hong Sang-soo. If we can’t stroll around Potsdamer Platz this year, at least the characters in “Introduction“ can share a moment there.
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At 66 minutes long, and like many of the director’s other works, the film is an exercise in frugality. Every word spoken, glance stolen, or sip of soju taken has importance, and the film wastes no time or space in delivering its story. The combination of playful humor and honest, often melancholy self-reflection in Hong Sang-soo’s films is a recipe that seems to work time and time again; a feat made more impressive by the sheer prolificacy of the filmmaker who has delivered a film almost once (if not more) a year for over a decade. “Introduction” is no different, a charming and gentle piece about how love can change over a period of time and how watching someone else grow can be a difficult reminder of one’s own youth.
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Divided into three chapters, we witness a young relationship’s lifespan — its beginning, the subsequent divide, and the later reunion. It is unclear how much time is passing, just that it is. The couple in question, Young-ho (Shin Seok-ho, jittery and sensitive) and Ju-won (Park Mi-so, a brilliantly unassuming performance), are briefly introduced before they separate; Young-ho is heading to visit his father’s acupuncture practice and will meet Ju-won later. When they meet again in the second chapter of the film, it is thousands of miles away from South Korea in Berlin, where Ju-won has recently moved to study fashion.
As is Hong Sang-soo’s wont, the film sways with both ease, and a sharp focus from conversation to conversation as characters meet and the threads of connection between them begin to form. Importantly, as the film’s title suggests, the central interactions are introductions — Ju-won is presented to an artist friend of her mother’s (played by the filmmaker’s regular collaborator Kim Min-hee) shortly after moving to Berlin, while Young-ho meets an actor friend of his mother’s in the final segment. Both sequences reflect with quiet insight on the role of a parent in a young person’s life, the ways they can attempt to shape their children’s future or guide them towards a path they may not have found by themselves. They also depict how forceful and damaging this can be and the importance of rebellion and impulsivity. The film is also clear to explore how memory is subjective; Ju-won’s mother is hesitant to let her wander around Berlin searching for the visiting Young-ho when she is reminded that in her past, she would have acted the same.
The man, Young-ho’s mother, introduces him to in the film’s third act is a man we meet early on, a patient at Young-ho’s father’s clinic. Is he a family friend, or is there a hidden past between the man and his mother? It is never revealed, but the man’s outburst at Young-ho soon into their conversation suggests deeper, built-up anger — or perhaps it is just drunkenness, another of the director’s favored tools. Is there a similar history between Ju-won’s mother and her friend, the artists? There is power in what is left unsaid. The filmmaker excels in capturing how lives change and move on, but elements of friendships and histories linger. In each chapter of the film, there is a moment where two of the characters hold each other in a tight embrace — signs of empathy but also physical acts of keeping a loved one, in whatever form that love takes, from stumbling to the ground.
“Introduction” initially feels like a smaller, quieter addition to the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Still, it proves to be another delicate and profound testament to how our lives can always be intertwined with those from our past, to the everyday human interactions, and especially to the honesty and wide-eyed possibility of youth. “The light is great today,” one of Young-ho’s friends comments late into the film. “A shame only we can see it.” [B+]
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