Cinema
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well
돼지가 우물에 빠진 날
Hong Sang-soo · 1996
Synopsis
Four characters in Seoul, whose days cross. Hyo-seop, a novelist without much of a future, lets himself be kept by Min-jae, a cinema employee who loves him and believes him a great writer, while having an affair with Bo-gyeong. She stays, without remorse, in a loveless marriage with Dong-u, an employee of a water purifier company, who succeeds on the surface and distrusts his wife. Each is followed in turn, in their solitude and their anxiety about the future.
Context
From a screenplay by Koo Hyo-seo, the director asked four authors each to imagine a day in a character's life, then wove their stories together; the 1997 Berlin entry states that about nine tenths of the dialogue was improvised with the actors. Kim Eui-sung, Lee Eung-kyung, Cho Eun-sook and Park Jin-sung play the four roles, and Song Kang-ho makes his debut there. The film, of one hundred and fifteen minutes, was shown at the Berlin Forum in 1997; its title comes from a book by John Cheever published in 1954. It earned its director the award for best direction at the Blue Dragon Awards.
Who it is for
One hundred and fifteen minutes; its author's first film, available in France on video on demand.
Prizes and reception
Awards at the Vancouver festival in 1996 and the Rotterdam festival the following year.