Like You Know It All

Director: Hong Sang-Soo
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 2.0

A Korean filmmaker (Kim Tae-woo, playing an alternate version of Hong) is invited to a film festival as a judge, but spends most of his time wandering around, drinking, smoking and getting into trouble (by asking inappropriate questions, sleeping with married women, etc.). There's a real lack of urgency to this and I hate to say it, but with some of Hong's movies it seems like he's just making them to make them: so many of his pictures just repeat the same very loose structure, drift about and end (more or less) arbitrarily. When this particular waltz ends, it's never clear whether Hong's stand-in (or even Hong himself) will ever learn from his mistakes. One thing made me smile, however, and it's how defensive Hong's stand-in gets whenever someone asks him about his work: prickly filmmakers ... all of you!