Screening at The 52nd New York Film Festival: Sept. 30, 6:00 pm ET (Walter Reade Theater); Oct. 8, 9:00 pm ET (Howard Gilman Theater).
Mori (Kase Ryo) is an unemployed Japanese worker who has come to Seoul, Korea, to locate and re-connect with Kwon (Seo Younghwa) who rejected him two years ago. They taught together in a Korean language school. But Mori comes up empty-handed in his search for her and his hopes to win back her love.
Meanwhile, this foreigner stays at an inn run by an elderly landlady. Taking an interest in him, she asks plenty of questions and makes some off-putting generalities about both Japanese and Korean people. Her gregarious nephew Sangwon (Kim Euisung) becomes Mori's drinking companion. Although he is deep in debt, he tries to keep up a cheerful appearance. But his anger and chauvinism comes out in a brief encounter with a pretty young woman staying at the inn.
Depressed by his inability to find Kwon, Mori sleeps a lot. But the surprise of his trip comes when he is romanced by Youngsun (Moon Sori) who runs a coffee shop named "Hill of Freedom." She is a pretty young woman who is dating a nasty man who treats her badly. She's attracted to Mori and sees him as a "good man." She would agree with the title of a novel by Flannery O'Connor — A Good Man Is Hard to Find. They have sex together and begin to become very intimate with each other. At the same time, Kwon is reading Mori's letters delineating his loneliness and search for her.
Hill of Freedom is directed by Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo who has a keen interest in probing the different shades of love. There are many humorous moments in this romantic drama as Mori and his new acquaintances seek to communicate their feelings with each other. The film really clicks as a vivid glimpse into the fears, uncertainties, and emptiness of those transitional times in our lives when we are neither here nor there but caught up in a mysterious in-between land.
