At a time when so many people have been isolated, it is a hymn to the galvanizing spark of collaboration.

| Sep 19, 2023

If The Novelist's Film revolves around a writer and director who constantly surprises, Hong proves with this film, that he can, too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2023

A story told with the disarming humility of someone who does not carry with them the burdensome self-imposition of sharing great revelations every time they bring us together in a movie theater. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2023

We feel the purity of art, how isolated the circuit is from the artist to the work and back. The impact of all art is on the individual first, and the burden of creating and fashioning that individual impact is shouldered by each artist in their own way.

| Mar 6, 2023

Hong Sang-soo does not reinvent himself with "The Novelist's Film" but presents another title that highlights how he has perfected his particular style, which is bound to garner awards and attention from festival audiences for many years to come.

| Original Score: 7 | Jan 4, 2023

With The Novelist's Film, Hong Sang-soo vindicates his right to find cine in his actors, in the relationships with space, and in words that stir his deepest emotions -- like someone who prepares a magic potion for adventurers. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2022

Throughout this quite autobiographical deliberation, Hong assesses his own cinematic approach and defends it.

| Dec 21, 2022

Here the fourth wall is not broken, it is caressed and peeled with the tremor of the fingers. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 14, 2022

It’s a movie in love with words and human connection, pulling subtle punches with a cerebral pragmatism and purity of tone.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2022

One of Hong's most deeply felt works, a kind of mea culpa and act of personal renewal. Longterm followers of the filmmaker will find themselves greatly rewarded as he reflects on his life, work, and legacy with the grace of a true master of the craft.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 15, 2022

A deceptively quiet film with a lot to say about the process of making art and leaving things up to chance.

| Nov 9, 2022

Tense, absorbing and finally enchanting...

| Nov 7, 2022

... features a striking sense of urgency about the desire to experiment than you usually see in his pictures, as well as a desire to embrace the unexpected coincidences and signs that pop up in one's own life.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 28, 2022

A Chekhovian study in small moments and chance encounters, which is to say it is a study of human beings as they really live: ambiguously and without exposition, spontaneously and without tidy motives or resolution.

| Oct 27, 2022

I can’t say whether Hong has suffered any of the creative self-doubts that animate his latest heroine, but the film he’s made for her feels as revealing as the one she then makes for herself.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 25, 2022

“The Novelist’s Film” is straightforwardly chronological and naturalistic, but that makes it no less intricate or sophisticated a reflection on the nature of movies, both intellectual and practical.

| Oct 25, 2022

Wispy, nuanced and enchanting.

| Oct 24, 2022

The Novelist’s Film pays stunning tribute to Kim’s ability to inspire, both as the character of Gilsoo and as herself, and as such, feels particularly poignant.

| Oct 22, 2022

These films [are] an organic extension of the concerns and approaches of the Late Hong period. Together, they sum up not just the most recent films, but hearken back as well to Early and Middle Hongs with all the wisdom, irritability, and serenity of age.

| Aug 15, 2022

Another focused, charming autofiction, well-structured yet open to the inspirations of serendipity.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 7, 2022