Woman Is the Future of Man (2004)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is my third Sang Soo Hong flick, and quite probably my last. After A Virgin Stripped Bare..., A Woman on the Beach and now Woman Future, I was amazed by how they are all THE SAME STORY! A movie director (come on, Hong - there are other types of people in the world) has sex with girl(s)(come on, Hong - there are other types of things people do with other people in the world),gets drunk and abusive, making a scene in a restaurant (come on, Hong - there are ways in which people's characters and frustrations can be revealed without going over-the-emotional-top each time)and then,.... Nothing! No end of resolution or point to the film. And unlike other reviewers who found this (and I paraphrase) 'a deft, fragile touch at portraying the inconclusiveness of much of real life', I found it an inevitable corollary of having nothing real to say except what you navel-gazed and fantasized about in your life as a movie director/chaser of women/drunk. In Woman Future, the main character (here, an art professor) meets a new woman with 12 minutes to go in the film, has a form of sex and then says goodbye as she catches a cab. What? No conclusion was reached either here or with respect to his relations with his film director friend or their mutual girlfriend. Even his sex scenes have no development. The couple walk down the hall. Cut. The couple are now naked in bed, thrusting. (come on, Hong - there is such a thing as seduction, and the art of romance). The real clincher for me about the similarity of these 'films' was clicking the 'People who liked this also liked...' section on the IMDb page for this film. There, I found twelve more titles of Hong films, with a capsule plot sketch of each. And they're all the same! Some artist (usually a movie director)has a friend. Their stories get entwined with those of a woman. Again, and again, and again. How does this guy get the $ to do this again and again and again? 3/10

Munho and Hyeon-gon are two friends who meet up years later. They go out to lunch and begin to reminisce. One is now a filmmaker and the other an art teacher, both share Seon-hwa in common. The story unfolds that Munho and Seon-hwa dated and Munhoo left her to study in America. While she waited, she began an affair with his friend Hyeon-gon. All these years later Munho has no idea and the two decide to go visit Seon-hwa together. Hyeon-gon expresses in the beginning that he is married and no longer sees his wife as a woman or wife anymore and instead as "human" therefore she can do as she likes. When the two meet up with Seon-hwa, Munho is obviously upset over the past and wants to rectify things with her, however, the triangle persists and then unravels into yet another entangle that made me a tad puzzled. What exactly this film meant and a tie in with the title, I'm not sure if I fully grasped. I liked many elements about the film, but felt that the lack of close ups was strange and distant, and the story felt almost open-ended. I would like to know more about it but I'd say it was still interesting.

It's been a while since I watched the amusingly titled "Woman is the Future of Man" at the Quad. More than a year and 2 Hong Sang-Soo films later it remains among my favorite films.While it's always refreshing and welcome to see films depart from the pyrotechnics of the Hollywood school of film-making, some films' subtlety and quietness are rather oppressive (Tsai Ming-Liang immediately comes to mind). I think I have a longer attention span than the average film-goer, however, I have to admit that I can't sit through all kinds of slow films. Some are worth the challenge, others end up embodying the stereotype of the inaccessible art film. Hong's film would've looked like art house snobbery in action if not for the fact that it's made in a very straightforward manner focusing mainly on the most basic of emotions (and the complicated situations emanating from them). The style of film-making is so cinema verite, so unobtrusive, it's a joy to go beyond being a member of the audience and feel like an actual passerby. The best, most memorable celluloid stories stay in your mind as films but "Woman" is a story so well-told it feels more like snippets from somebody's life told by a close friend.Hong Sang-soo's "Woman is the Future of Man" is yet another great addition to the impressive national cinema of South Korea and one that pushes me to continue exploring more of this body of work. It's raw, naked jealousy, regret, love, lust, and longing. It's a bittersweet reminder for anyone who's ever experienced romantic love and its many variations and deviations. This is it how it happens and somehow Mr. Hong has captured it through the magic of cinema.

I enjoy these outtakes of real life films very much, if they are done right it feels like you can watch and watch for hours on end without feeling bored, another Korean example of this type of film is 'Nakta dul' which I think is better.The actors are good and fit their respective roles well and its a realistic portrait of these people. That is for the situations they are in as well. The role sex has here makes me a bit embarrassed to be a male, the guilty mood is created by sexual desire and the lenghts they take to fulfill it. "We don't have real culture, people are only thinking of sex" or something along the similar lines was uttered in the café, somehow it sums it up.Its an OK movie that I give a 5 of 10.