With only a modicum of exaggeration, at least half of the Toronto International Film Festival’s volunteer army is pounding the pavement with their ballot boxes for the Grolsch People’s Choice Award, regardless of whether they’re stationed outside the exit of an Oscar vehicle or an avant-garde documentary. One TIFF regular certain to never win that award (perhaps because he often doesn’t attend with his films, as is the case this year) is Hong Sang-soo, but that is certainly not for lack of trying. Like clockwork, Hong brings his latest work to the festival each fall — this year, “Yourself and Yours” for its World Premiere — which is typically placed in the Masters program. For some, each new feature is disparagingly “More of the same,” and to others, excitingly “More of the same!” Without applying the lazy label of “minor” to the film, “Yourself and Yours” lacks the narrative intricacy of the South Korean filmmaker’s most celebrated work but nonetheless serves as a charming introductory point for unfamiliar audiences.
Like most of Hong’s filmography, this latest feature is a love permutation (never a simple triangle) with the two most prominent points being painter Young-soo (Kim Joo-hyuck) and the object of his desire, Minjung (Lee You-young). After an argument over her tendency to drink excessively — a staple ritual of Hong’s corpus, if not the staple ritual — Minjung leaves Young-soo. It is at this point that the other suitors begin to enter: Hong Sang-soo regulars Kwon Hae-hyo and Yoo Joon-sang, each meeting the young woman for the first time in a café. However, coming upon both men, this woman — who appears so familiar — insists that she is not the Minjung that they once encountered in passing.
All of this makes for a sound romantic comedy premise, to be sure, with the most plausible explanation (at least with the first encounter after Young-soo) being that Minjung has a twin sister, as she first suggests — altogether too simple and tidy. Instead, the doubling, nested narratives and forking paths that are characteristic of Hong’s filmography manifest through Minjung, who takes on a metaphysical dimension through her apparent doppelgängers. This is a status that is never confirmed or denied, instead taking on its own validity through the woman’s (women’s?) insistence. The film becomes, as per usual, a type of “choose your own adventure” experience for the spectators, albeit on a smaller scale.
The scenario of “Yourself and Yours” is far more palatable and intriguing as a result of Lee’s layered performance. Through a balance of sly expressions and ernest confusion, the actress is, at all times, floating the possibility of multiple Minjungs. It is an uncertainty that is particularly tenuous because her wardrobe — she wears the same shirt as she moves from one lover to the next — operates against this theory. This counterproductive detail is complemented by the fact that none of the doubles are given names, and a bartender who serves as a narrating witness to the woman’s trysts. As with “Right Now, Wrong Then” — a centerpiece for Kim Min-hee, who went on to a star-making role in “The Handmaiden” — the complexity of the female character is the highlight, and the hapless men attempt (and fail) to comprehend or maintain a hold on Minjung. Her impulse to break away from relationships at the first sign of controlling behavior is admirable and amusing in its lack of subtlety.
The instances of mistaken identity compound as scenes are repeated with different players, such as Minjung taking both the first and second suitors to the bar, only to have both men confront her there (and, hilariously, realize that they know each other as well). The humor of this awkward situation, among others, is staged somewhat differently than the soju drinking scenes in the director’s earlier work, and the belly laughs that it provokes are reminiscent of the best scenes in “In Another Country” and “Right Now, Wrong Then.” Minjung ultimately circles back to Young-soo — they both seem to be moving on parallel tracks through the night’s neon-lit streets, in search of each other — and the happy ending on her terms is satisfying, if unusually neat.
There is a nagging sense that Hong Sang-soo is capable of more than what is on display in “Yourself and Yours”: something more confounding, a more elaborate narrative and certainly more inebriated shenanigans. Indeed, the movie seems over almost before it really begins, perhaps because, unlike his last film “Right Now, Wrong Then” or many that came before it, “Yourself and Yours” doesn’t reboot itself in the middle. With that in mind, the wispy nature of the film brings its own comfortable pleasures, and the best thing about this South Korean filmmaker is, if his latest isn’t particularly striking, one can rest assured the next film is at the most twelve months down the road (the standing rumor is another two features are in the can). At that point, the modest festival fanfare for “Yourself and Yours” — stops are already planned at San Sebastián and NYFF — will likely have converted at least a few more neophytes to Hong Sang-soo’s eccentricities. [B+]
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