by Nataliia Serebriakova
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Berlin International Film Festival
Cast:
Park Mi-so, Song Seon-mi, Cho Yun-hee
Intro:
… a profound reflection on memory, self-representation, and the violence of being interpreted by others.
This year, as in many previous ones, South Korean veteran of the festival circuit Hong Sang-soo premiered his new film The Day She Returns at the Berlinale. It is a restrained black-and-white work divided into five chapters. In the first three parts, a middle-aged actress (Park Mi-so), who has returned to acting in an indie film after a long hiatus, gives interviews to three different young journalists. In the final two acts, she reconstructs these conversations during an acting class.
When Carlo Chatrian was the Berlinale’s artistic director, Hong Sang-soo won four Silver Bears. After the American-British Tricia Tuttle took over as festival director, the festival’s policy shifted slightly: this year, Hong’s film was placed not in the main competition but in the Panorama section. This is surprising, because The Day She Returns is a very strong film, fully deserving of competing for the Golden Bear.
Hong Sang-soo is known for his extraordinary productivity: he makes roughly two films a year and often casts either the French star Isabelle Huppert (Claire’s Camera, The Traveler’s Needs) or his South Korean muse Kim Min-hee (The Woman Who Ran, On the Beach at Night Alone) in leading roles. His films are usually built around casual conversations, walks through beautiful landscapes, and copious drinking (it is even said that actors actually get drunk on set). At the center of his stories are typically people in creative professions — most often filmmakers — which makes his work particularly ironic in relation to himself.
In the new film, the heroine functions as something like his own alter ego. The journalists, who at first appear inexperienced and awkward, try — through indirect questions — to extract tabloid details from the interviewee, such as how her divorce unfolded. Hong Sang-soo himself went through a highly publicised divorce, during which his wife took him to court, and he is now married to Kim Min-hee (who is credited as a producer on this film). He presents this painful chapter of his life with his characteristic light humour.
However, the film’s most powerful section is the part in which the actress reconstructs her interviews. The gap becomes clear between what she was asked and what she actually wanted to say. While the journalists were asking whether she likes alcohol and how she raises her daughter, the heroine wanted to speak about the most intimate and decisive moment of her life. This reveals the difference between how the press often works and how it should work in reality.
Once again, Hong Sang-soo proves his mastery, addressing this film directly to the Berlinale’s film critics — to whom he almost never grants interviews.
One more defining quality of The Day She Returns is its radical restraint. Hong Sang-soo reduces form to an apparent minimum: static shots, sparse mise-en-scène, repetitive structures, and a deliberately modest visual language. Nothing here calls attention to itself, and yet this very simplicity creates space for meaning to emerge. Beneath the minimal surface lies an emotional and intellectual density that unfolds gradually, almost imperceptibly. Small shifts in tone, pauses in speech, and repetitions of seemingly banal questions accumulate into a profound reflection on memory, self-representation, and the violence of being interpreted by others. Hong’s minimalism is never empty; it is a disciplined refusal of excess, a way of trusting the viewer to listen closely and recognise that the most essential truths often appear in the quietest, most understated moments.
