The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“Hong Sangsoo’s sly, silvery latest is one of his recent greatest … A sparkling diversion about alternate lives that runs circles around even his recent output for storytelling satisfaction.”

Jessica Kiang, Variety

In a prolific career marked by seemingly endless variations on customary pet themes (comforts to those who count the director part of their regular cinematic diet), there is risk for the uninitiated to dismiss a new Hong Sangsoo film as just another volume in an already voluminous body of work. But doing so would deny the rewards of experiencing a Hong picture as a singular, stand-alone discovery—and Walk Up, his twenty-eighth feature, is among his richest offerings to date. An accordion-shaped tale that flattens and expands time with delicate, almost invisible engineering, Walk Up stages a series of episodes in the life (or lives) of a filmmaker (frequent Hong stand-in Kwon Haehyo), whose ascent up the floors of an old friend’s apartment building opens pathways to futures either fated or imagined. Along the way, Hong chews on questions—cosmic to mundane—with wit, charm, and casual profundity. Lee Hyeyoung (The Novelist’s Film) co-stars.

In Korean with English subtitles

“A remarkably tender film … It may have you—like its characters—pouring yourself glass after glass as you process its delicious complexities.”

Jonathan Romney, Screen International

“His best in quite some time … The remarkable achievement of Walk Up is that Hong at once [offers] both a linear, behaviorally coherent chronology and a metaphysical image of simultaneously coexisting presents.”

Lawrence Garcia, In Review Online