STATES OF LONELINESS Proximity and Distance in On the Beach at Night Alone
As two women approach a bridge, one abruptly stops, kneels down and prostrates herself. The other walks on – obliviously at first, and then, having glanced backwards, more hesitantly. Later, as they sit together on a park bench, the topic is furtively raised: what was the purpose of this act? ‘[It was] just a prayer,’ the first explains, ‘to try resolving what it is I really want.’
There are many such bridges in On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo, 2017), though mostly of the metaphorical variety: the plane trip that might reunite geographically separated lovers; flailing attempts to connect via language; the moment of waking from a dream. Physical contact, the elimination of empty space between people, is also a bridge; but here it is mostly absent, making the film’s fleeting moments of touch – an experimental kiss, a hand offered and held – all the more charged, desperate.
The film’s most consequential acts of bodily intimacy lie beyond the frame. In the opening scenes, Young-hee (Kim Min-hee), a South Korean actor, is in Germany, having fled the brutal public examination of her affair with a married director. We never see the salacious newspaper headlines or the hate-filled social-media posts about the scandal, and we scarcely need to. Australian viewers familiar with
