Review: HaHaHa

Munkyung is a young Korean filmmaker planning on moving to Canada to live with an aunt. Few days prior to leaving, he catches up with his friend Jungshik over drinks. They swap fond stories of their recent adventures in a small seaside town without realizing how intersected their respective tales were in time, place, and people involved.

Writer/director Sangsoo Hong frames his screenplay in this friendly conversation between several rounds of drinks, painting a full portrait of groups of friends drifting through their summer in joy, sorrow, and immense self-consciousness. Hong makes sure to remind us of the subjective and probably not entirely trustworthy framing of the story by interrupting long sequences of their memories in color and motion with black and white montages of still photos showing their present conversation, with voice over of the men chatting and laughing before initiating the next segment with multiple "cheers." Clearly playing against the conventional instinct to show memory and pastness in black and white or through still photographs rather than the present, Hong gives us fascinating insight into his perspective of how memories are formed and play out more colorfully and cinematically than our present does.

More to the probable point, however, is the humanity with which these characters interact with each other. Our two narrators agree in the beginning to only reflect upon pleasant memories, but what plays out is not necessarily a rosy picture. The people we follow are not perfect — in fact, most of them can be downright irritating and unlikeable. This can make it difficult for Hong to maintain the viewer's attention throughout the film's slowly paced running time, but, with patience, the audience will be rewarded with a humane sympathy towards these characters in spite of their wallowing self-pity, aching self-consciousness and sensitivity for the simple fact that these colors only show when they interact with people they care about. It's less about the characters on their own than it is about the dynamics of the important personal relationships they keep, whether out of friendship, family, or romance.

HaHaHa is a more vérité entry in a blossoming New Wave for Korean cinema which had a very successful year at last year's Cannes Film Festival — with this film winning the Un Certain Regard prize joining the fantastic film Poetry (from the same production company, Finecut) taking screenplay honors in the main competition. Actress Sori Moon is Seongok, the strong-willed and proudly independent woman who still holds a basic need for a loving intimacy. Moon is on the younger end of the ensemble that spans a diverse group of all walks of life in age, shape and profession to give a broad spectrum of Korean life including the more middle aged Munkyung, whom she ultimately ends up with, and his mother (the old Korean mother being a central figure in many Korean films such as Mother or Poetry).

HaHaHa will have a special screening at the newly renovated Museum of the Moving Image on Sunday, February 20th at 6 p.m. as part of their "Korean Cinema Now" series with the help of The Korea Society.