(Text/Ghost Foot Seven)
"Right Now, Wrong Then" is a typical Hong Shangxiu movie, perhaps even Hong Shangxiu's best work in recent years. It's a clear love story. The love, dialogue and walking, as well as the inevitable smoking and drinking, "Right Then Wrong" tells a dating story about emotional encounters and life encounters while maintaining Hong Sangxiu's usual style elements. . For Hong Sang-soo, who is accustomed to depicting the entanglement of love between men and women in the city, this film does not face eroticism itself, but shows the "foreplay" of eroticism meticulously, the encounter and approach of the hero and heroine, the stupid desire and Restrained speech. As for the result, it may not be the focus of the film. What really touches us is Hong Sang-soo's grasp of the sensitive details of life and the little embarrassment and humor that make people smile.
However, as Hong Sangxiu's most formal work, the most striking thing about "Right Now, Wrong Then" is still the two different story progressions and endings shown by the film through the structure of juxtaposition and contrast. The protagonist of the film Chun-soo, like most of Hong Sang-soo's other protagonists, is a little-known director. He came across the female painter Soo-jung while giving lectures in other places. The two met by chance because of the same "artist" status. Attracted to each other, this looks like a simple one-night stand story. But the subtlety of the film lies in whether this dewy mandarin duck's eroticism can really take place. The involvement and constraints are everywhere, but it is elusive. In the first story, the sleek and skilled Chun-soo approached Soo-jung little by little, with just the right way to strike up a conversation, attentive but not excessive invitations, timely flattery, and reserved refusal, from the coffee shop to Soo-jung's From the studio to the small restaurant for dinner, like a calm hunter, he is approaching his goal step by step. When everything was going well, at the party of Soo-jung's friends, the drunk Chun-soo had to reveal the truth of his marriage when he was asked if he was married. The facts disappointed Xiu Jing to the extreme, and perhaps even more disappointing was that the humorous, considerate, and talented director image she had in mind before finally collapsed in front of a lie that deliberately concealed the truth. Xiu Jing got up and left the seat, and the harmonious and ambiguous relationship between the two came to an end.
In the second story, with the same identity and the same encounter, this time Chunzhu looks clumsy and jerky. Not only does he seem a little helpless in front of Xiujing, he even evaluates Xiujing's paintings because he confesses his Feelings aroused Xiu Jing's dissatisfaction. The clumsy Chun-soo is obviously not as familiar with the various "taboos" of intercourse between men and women as the "old girl" Chun-soo. At the dinner table, he confessed the fact that he was married, and broke down and cried when he talked about his life - this is not at all. The performance that did not fit the image of a "successful man" did not make Xiujing lower his rating. Even when Soo-jeong learned that he was getting drunk and stripped naked at a friend's party, his first reaction was to laugh and think "cute and funny". Apparently, Chun-soo, who was clumsy and violated the "rules", got some kind of "success" by accident in a place where an old lover stumbled. In fact, it's not Chun-soo's skills and attitudes that really lead to the different endings of the two stories - of course, Hong Sang-soo is not here to teach viewers to be "wise and foolish" to arouse the woman's desire for protection when dating. The difference between the two stories is whether Chun-soo relaxed and frankly displayed himself during the date. In the two stories, we can piece together the background and psychology of Chun-soo. He has his own career and his own distress. He is facing his own predicament and yearns for new changes and turns. Chun-soo in the first story tried so hard to cover it all up, while in the second he didn't evade (or tried to dodge and failed), which may be a kind of candor and sincerity, but what Hong Sang-soo wanted to say Perhaps it is that we have never been able to know what the consequences of our own rules and practices will be. It is not clear what "this time" and "that" refer to when "this time is right and then the other is wrong". In order to strengthen this vague referential effect, Hong Sang-soo even called the title of the two stories at the beginning of each story. "Right Now, Wrong Then" does not judge who is right or wrong in the two stories, after all In this attempted derailment story, right and wrong are always two sides of symbiosis. After the film shows the different choices of life and the ending that cannot be grasped in advance, what we see may only be the accident and impermanence of life.
So "Right Then Wrong" once again returned to the consistent theme of Hong Sangxiu's films, the performance of the contingency of life. The relationship between a man and a woman briefly described in this film begins with the same encounter, but begins to divide at every occasional small fork in the process of getting along. We can recognize the beginning and the end of a story, but we can't tell exactly when and why the change began. Hong Sang-soo continues to present his feelings about life in this exquisitely trimmed and skillfully arranged film. and remodeling. As audiences, we may also continue to appreciate the life situations that we have ignored from his works.
Originally published in "Film World" 2015 Issue 12
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