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Woman Is The Future Of Man : Limited Special Edition (DVD)
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Product Detail |
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Audio Format: DD 5.1 Surround, DD 2.0 Stereo Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Korean Subtitles: English, Korean Region Code: ALL Year Made: 2004 Running Time: 87
 Woman is the Future of Man may not mark any major departures of style for celebrated auteur Hong Sang-soo, but the filmmaker is still in top form in this tightly-constructed, mesmerizing work. Although it features much of the awkward dialogue and cutting irony that has made Hong's previous films so distinctive, Woman feels in some ways both more shallow and more elusive than the works that preceded it. As such, it is a difficult film to make sense of, unless you have had previous exposure to the negative energy that fills Hong's cinematic world.
As with all of his previous works, Hong's title for this film is an object of curiosity. It is a line taken from an Louis Aragon poem that Hong saw printed on a postcard in a French bookstore. Hong's tongue-in-cheek effort to explain it doesn't leave one feeling any wiser: "As the future is yet to come, it means nothing, and if the future is multiplied by man, the result is still zero. And if woman is the future of man, which is zero, then woman is also nothing..."
Perhaps if those critics had researched Hong's filmography, they would have realized that his films are something unique in world cinema. On an aesthetic level, no other filmmaker produces the same weird tempo created by Hong's editing, and the elegance which underlies the awkward surface of his films. This is not where you should look for lectures on social ills or for moving tributes to humanity, but if you want an honest and sober effort to depict something truthful in human relationships, then this film is something you will enjoy more and more with each repeated viewing.
Two men pursue a woman form their past in this drama from South Korea. Heon-jun (Kim Tae-woo), a struggling filmmaker who has just returned from the United States, runs into his old friend Mun-ho (Yu Ji-tae), now an art professor, and they decide to get a bite to eat. Over dinner, they find themselves talking about Seon-hwa (Seong Hyeon-ah), a beautiful woman they both dated in college. While both men flirt with their waitress, talking about how Seon-hwa has renewed their fascination with their old love, and they individually decide to track her down. They discover Seon-hwa, once an artist, is now working as a bar manager; they learn, in her personal life, the fates have not been kind to her, and in many respects, she's not the women she once was.
Yeojaneun Namjaeui Miraeda (aka Woman is the Future of Man) was screened in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Review by Joon Soh (Korea Times)
 Smart, literate and subtly funny, Hong Sang-su's ``Yojanun Namja-ui Miraeda (Woman is the Future of Man)'' is the latest incarnation of the director's vivid and often unflattering portrayals of how we fumble through desires. Much like his highly acclaimed previous films, the protagonists come off looking selfish and misguided but at the same time wholly and sympathetically human.
``Woman'' takes place in a span of two days, starting with two 30-something college friends _ Hon-jun (Kim Tae-woo), an aspiring filmmaker, and Mun-ho (Yoo Ji-tae) an art professor _ catching up on old times. Drinking and talking at a Chinese restaurant, their conversation turns to Son-hwa (Sung Hyun-ah), whom they both dated some seven years ago, and in an inebriated moment, they decide to search her out.
Those who have watched Hong's earlier films like ``Kangwondo-ui Him (The Power of Kangwon Province)'' or ``Oh! Soojung (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors)'' know not to expect dramatic narrative twists. In fact, not much will seem to be happening in ``Woman,'' even when Mun-ho and Hon-jun do find Son-hwa halfway through the film.
But the thing with Hong's films is that the closer you look, the more you'll see. As in Hong's 2001 film, ``Saenhwal-ui Palgyon (On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate),'' ``Woman'' revolves around how two relationships to the same person play off each other. There's a sense of overlapping and symmetry in the way the two friends dealt with their past love, which we see through a series of flashbacks, and through it, how they deal with life in general. For Hon-jun, Sonhwa was a love thoroughly mishandled, one he abandoned when going off to the United States to study and still feels lingering guilt over. For Mun-ho, who met Sonhwa after Hon-jun, his feelings and intentions are more distanced and therefore more difficult to ascertain.
Though the director leaves a lot of room for improvisation, often working without a set script or dialogue, ``Woman'' is still a carefully rendered film, with all its banal components having a precise place. This order is most obvious in a cleverly filmed Chinese restaurant scene, in which the two unknowingly repeat each other's actions, including using similar lines while flirting with the waitress.
But perhaps because of the precision in its execution, ``Woman'' lacks an element of surprise that, no matter how reserved, Hong's works have always had before. A film that competed at Cannes this year (2004), ``Woman'' may not have the disquieting epiphanies of his best work, but it is perhaps the best-crafted film Hong has made, and shows a director who has fully come into his own.
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