The Korean movie Bamui Haebyeoneseo Honja was shown in the U.S. with the translated title On the Beach at Night Alone (2017). It was written and directed by Sang-soo Hong.
Min-hee Kim stars as Young-hee, who was apparently a successful actor, but who now describes herself as box office poison. The reason for this is that she had an affair with a movie director, who is married.
The movie is divided into two parts. In the first part, Young-hee is visiting an older woman, who is her friend. Young-hee is waiting for her lover, who may or may not arrive. The last few frames of this part didn't make sense to me, so I don't know if he arrived or not.
In part two, Young-hee has arrived back in Korea after two years abroad. (Another reviewer says she was in Hamburg, Germany. I didn't see that in the subtitles--maybe the reviewer speaks Korean.)
What follows is an interminable hour of Young-Hee either walking on the beach (sometimes alone), sometimes with other people), but never at night.
Interspersed with her walks are conversations with friends during which Young-hee looks vacuous. Mostly they talk about each other. "You are beautiful." "Yes, but the script girl is beautiful too." The highlight of these conversations comes when a character asks Young-hee, "Are you still searching for love?" Her answer: "Where's love? It's not even visible. You need to see it in order to search for it."
Also, by the way, Young-hee is a mean drunk. Apparently that's OK, because she's a beautiful movie star.
Director Sang-soo Hong is an international darling of the film world, so his movies get shown at important festivals, and they get awards. This film was nominated for awards at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. Min-Hee Kim won the Golden Bear award for her acting.
It's not a coincidence that she herself did, indeed, have an affair with Sang-soo Hong. So, art reflects live, or maybe vice-versa.
Fortunately, IMDb raters weren't impressed by the reputation of the director and star. The film has an anemic IMDb rating of 6.8. I didn't think it was even that good. I rated it a 5.
P.S. Normally, IMDb male raters outnumber female raters by two to one, or three to one. In this case it was five to one. My guess is that men went to see it because the title made them think it would be a sex film, a horror film, or both. For the record, it's neither.
