[HanCinema's Film Review] "The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well"

Romantic relationships are often defined not so much by love as a sad desperation for intimacy. "The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well" has no pig, no well, and doesn't even take place over the course of a single day. But it does very accurately portray the kind of simplistic emotional need that drives a pig, normally a perfectly intelligent animal, to be so foolhardy as to plunge into a giant hole in the ground.

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We meet several characters, in succession, who are in romantic relationships but whose interactions with their significant others are so offhand, so abstract, that unless we see them onscreen at the same time it's really difficult to see how this actually affects their lives. They're all extremely insecure people who are too emotionally guarded to genuinely speak about their agitations in life with pretty much anyone.

What they do have are dreams. But these dreams, perversely enough, are themselves heavily wrapped up in those very same barely present relationships with other people. All of these characters are expecting to be saved- a laughable proposition, because we see all these "saviors" in full focus, and they're too wrapped up in their own problems to even consider the idea that they should be thinking, foremost, about helping their partners than just advancing their own intimacy.

This is all done in an intensely subtle way. Often it's a little too subtle for its own good. When the film transitions, it does so very abruptly, and attempting to overthink it at that stage is a recipe for confusion. It's only as more of the anthology comes into place that the various connections in the plot become more clear. Just stay rest assured that these connections do exist, that new characters are often introduced, and that they are tangibly connected to existing ones.

The film isn't just an exercise in metaphorical thinking- it's also a huge undertaking in patience. The pace is all so slow and understated that it often feels as if the story is just lingering on without a point. Well, that's not really accurate- there really isn't any coherent story. Just character development, exploration, and most importantly, the shared commonalities between all of these people who seem to be going after their intimacy problems in radically different ways but who actually have a surprisingly great deal of common ground. The big joke is that we, the objective viewer, can make these connections whereas the actual characters can't, simply because they never take the chance to seriously communicate with each other.

"The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well" is not a film for everyone. It's director Hong Sang-soo in his rawest possible element- to be expected from his debut film, but the negatives of his ouevre are on strong display here. They're so extreme I'd personally recommend watching the film in parts rather than all at once, just to avoid the feeling of mental exhaustion. To a fan of the style, though, there's everything here a person could possibly want when conducting a post-mortem on a dead pig.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well" is directed by Hong Sang-soo and features Kim Eui-sung, Park Jin-sung-II and Cho Eun-sook.

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