If insanity is, as Albert Einstein may or may not have once actually said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then Hong Sang-soo is certifiable. Since 1996, the Korean filmmaker has made seventeen feature films – the latest being Right Now, Wrong Then (2015) – all striking in their similarity. These works are low-budget comedies-of-manners set in quotidian contemporary Korea, concerned with the kind of low-stakes drama that, in American cinema, is consigned to the mumblecore underground or experimental fringes. The director is an observer of human behaviour and male foibles, of uncomfortable social situations, Korean social conventions, squirmy pathos and drunken mating rituals. Save for how much sex is in Hong’s films, there’s little cinematic eye candy: no genre tropes, no gore, no…
