On the face of it, this film has several of the standard Hong tropes. Some guy from the art film fraternity, hanging around in a strange town, developing messy romantic relationships with strangers, bonding over drinking and smoking etc. At the same time, this is perhaps one of the saddest of Hong's films. The act of turning away from your loved one may seem to appear as an act of cowardice or unromantic to say the least, but that practical act can sometimes save a lot of heartburn. The legend of the turning gate and the reenactment of it in this film somehow hits me at an emotional level that few films have done before.
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