Watching Hong Sang Soo's first film "Daijiga umule pajinnal" is going to be an extremely uneasy visual experience for all casual as well as average viewers.This is because one will surely find it hard to understand whether the film is a portrait of a failed artist or an absurdist tale of highly unusual,bizarre human relationships.I managed to see this film at the campus of Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines at Lyon in company of a friend from South Korea.She made the viewing interesting for me with her comic remarks as being a Korean person,she is definitely more familiar with intricacies of Korean cultural life.This key association with Korean psyche is needed to understand what this film stands for.A word about our film's failed artist.He is rather controversial,bit moody and picks up fights too often with his colleagues.This is something which might be true of many talented artists all over the world.A different view of this film might concern Hong Sang Soo's observation that his film is a complex tale of human relationships as all the characters of his films are in troubled relationships without ascertaining what made them enter into them.

Having watched Hong Sang-Soo's three first movies in a row, I see that he has the potential of making quite different movies with the same technique. He shows us different characters one at a time that is somehow related to some of the other and the power of it lies in how he can make it look so naturally and casual and still craft a story around it. The small episodes are sometimes so strikingly close to real life that you wonder how they work at the set to make the actors be so much themselves.

This first of his movies is his most tragic. The writer (I wonder how much he bases his characters on himself as the writer/director is quite a recurring theme for him) is endlessly full of him self, leading a miserable existence that pulls the two (married) women who cares for him somewhere bleak. His behaviour is provoking and with no respect, but he still gets loved. Something he cynically use for sexual release.

This film essentially centers around four people living in Seoul, with the first one being a struggling writer named "Hyo-Seop" (Kim Eui-sung) who has been in a relationship with a woman by the name of "Min Jae" (Eun-sook Cho) for two years. And although she loves him very much, Hyo-Seop doesn't feel the same way toward her as he is carrying on a romantic relationship with a married woman named "Bo Gyeong" (Eung-Kyung Lee). For her part, Bo Gyeong also loves Hyo-Seop, to the point that she even refuses to sleep with her husband, "Dong-seok" (Song Kang-ho). At least, that is what she tells Hyo-Seop. Needless to say, Dong-seok has become suspicion that his wife is having an affair and, in an act of desperation, has a one-night stand with a prostitute--and things quickly go downhill from that point on. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an interesting film for the most part, due mainly to the provocative plot and fine acting all around. Admittedly, there were a couple of scenes of a sexual nature that viewers should probably be warned about ahead of time. So, this isn't a film for general audiences and viewer discretion is advised. Having said that, I thought that this was an entertaining film for the most part, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.