The Day He Arrives

Korean drama, shot in black and white, about a retired filmmaker who returns to Seoul and decides to meet up with old friends and old flames. However upon awaking he finds himself playing out the events of the previous day over and over...

"One of the loveliest, lightest films at Cannes this year, pensive yet often swept by quiet pleasures, was Hong Sang-soo’s delicately surreal The Day He Arrives. It is a sparser Groundhog Day done by Hong, in black and white and with copious alcohol. A young retired film director returns to Seoul and decides to meet his old friend, and before, during and after that encounter he runs into numerous other filmmakers – this surreal Seoul seems populated nearly entirely by production crew – drunkenly looks up his ex-girlfriend, and hangs around a bar whose owner looks exactly like – and indeed is played by the same actress as – his ex. And then the next day comes, and it proceeds with déjà vu echoes as the previous one, yet with different turns of each encounter." (Source: NZ International Film Festival 2011)

Less