Oki (Jung Yumi) walks the fine line between fiction and reality in OKI’S MOVIE
OKI’S MOVIE (OK-HUI-UI YEONGHWA) (Hong Sang-soo, 2010)
Maysles Institute
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
April 16-22, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
In works such as Like You Know It All, Woman on the Beach, Tale of Cinema, and Woman Is the Future of Man, Korean director Hong Sang-soo has explored the nature of his craft, using the creative process of filmmaking as a setting for his relationship-driven dramas. He examines the theme again in Oki’s Movie, a beautifully told tale told in four sections built around film professor Song (Moon Sung-keun) and students Jingu (Lee Sun-kyun) and Oki (Jung Yumi). Each chapter — “A Day for Chanting,” “King of Kiss,” “After the Snowstorm,” and “Oki’s Movie” — features a different point of view with a different narrator while walking the fine line between fiction and nonfiction. As in Tale of Cinema, certain parts are films within the film, shorts made by the characters for their class. Hong keeps viewers guessing what’s real as Oki balances a possible love triangle between her, Jingu, and Song; the final segment is a poetic masterpiece that brings everything together. In an intriguing twist — and emblematic of the realistic quality of Hong’s oeuvre — Oki’s Movie is having its official U.S. theatrical release April 16-22 at the Maysles Cinema, the Harlem institution devoted to documentaries, as part of the “Documentary in Bloom” series curated by Livia Bloom.