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The Day He Arrives

Book chon bang hyang (The Day He Arrives)

2011

Hong Sang-soo

Yoo Joon-sang, Song Seon-mi, Kim Eui-sung, Bae Yoo-ram ...

6.8

820

Comedy. Drama. Romance Sungjoon heads to Seoul to meet a close friend who lives in the Bukchon area. When the friend doesn’t answer his calls, Sungjoon wanders around Bukchon and runs into an actress he used to know. The two talk for a while, but soon part. He makes his way down to Insadong and drinks makgeolli (rice wine) by himself. Some film students at another table ask him to join them--Sungjoon used to be a film director. He soon gets drunk and heads ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The movie finds the right tone to present its bittersweet wisdom. It's relaxed. It's content to observe and listen (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"An exploration, both playful and rueful, of desire, narrative (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Mark Zhuravsky IndieWire	"The ideas at the heart of 'The Day He Arrives' are worth puzzling over and the discussion to follow may be the real reward, but the experience is muted"
		Andrew O'Hehir Salon	"A strange mixture of magic, mystery, rueful melodrama and dry comedy that's like absolutely nothing else"
		Noel Murray AV Club	"A time well spent"
		J.R. Jones Chicago Reader	"This feature seems like a trifle compared to his best work"
		Richard Brody The New Yorker	"Hong abstracts the tense network of fragile relationships to crisp, briskly sketched lines that he adorns with bubbly and self-deprecating humor and graceful wonders"
		Jaime N. Christley Slant	"Hong Sang-soo's most melancholy movie in some time (...) His recent protagonists may suffer through various crises of faith, but the director himself shows no signs that he's grown incurious of his own capabilities (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		Maggie Lee The Hollywood Reporter	Serves as an amusing itinerary of dining, drinking and sexual dalliance that beguilingly plays with narrative time

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