A young girl sits in a café and listens to other customers’ conversations, each of them a little story of its own. A new film by the iconic South Korean director.
In a café in Seoul, one customer spends time eavesdropping on conversations around her and making notes on her laptop. Nothing special seems to be going on here: a guy and a girl discuss the recent death of their friend; an elderly actor is asking his female mate for an overnight stay. The heroine is putting down their words, but what for? Is she working on a script or book? Writing a diary? Or perhaps, she is the author who invented the rest of the film’s characters…
Combining the Eastern and Western traditions, Sang-soo Hong, whose favorite directors include Ozu, Dreyer, Vigo, Renoir, and Bresson, draws on their legacies while also demonstrating a very subtle understanding of cinematic nature. This allows him to give the viewer an experience completely different from anything contemporary cinema has on offer. Grass is an extremely ascetic picture showings people who just sit and talk in a room. However, this visual material creates a multilevel story about the value of each and every human life, where everyone—characters, authors, and viewers—have equal rights.
Grass
Dir. Sang-soo Hong
South Korea, 2019. 66 min. 16+
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