Introduction

Introduction’s economy is deceptive, its staying power surprising.

Introduction initially feels like a smaller, quieter addition to the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Still, it proves to be another delicate and profound testament to how our lives can always be intertwined with those from our past, to the everyday human interactions, and especially to the honesty and wide-eyed possibility of youth.

Its clarity and simplicity—and the outrageous, nearly humorous audacity with which its brisk mysteries conjure wide-ranging, complex, and turbulent stories—makes it among Hong’s most compulsively rewatchable films.

This is a ‘minor’ Hong compared to some of the sixteen films he has premiered since 2010 . . . But it’s still a delight, a wistful, smart, chamber piece that gently teases out questions about whether you can love someone without controlling them in some way, whether acting can be sincere or sincerity can be an act, and how much of our life in the present and future is conditioned by our life in the past (a lot, as it turns out – but we knew that already).

Introduction feels like a mediation on how time chips away at first impressions: What started as something beautiful and simple can become complicated, unattainable, and hard to hold on to.

Introduction is a thick, tangled ball of yarn, compact but dense; like beloved Hong influence Bresson’s off-screen space, non-narrative information is ample and cosmic. But for all the deliberate choices and teasing ellipses, this is one of the director’s more meager works, appearing unfinished and misshapen rather than productively clipped at the edges.

Slight and discursive even by the filmmaker’s idiosyncratic standards, Introduction refuses to auto-correct for anyone who doesn’t already speak conversational Hong.