An extended essay on unrequited love. Some might call it two essays on unrequited love as the 3+ hour film is cut distinctly into two halves, complete with a credit roll separating them. The first half is in color and focuses on a guy whose married lover ends their affair. The second half is in mostly black & white and focuses on a woman the guy met in the first half (who tells her story in one 14 minute still-camera take against a concrete background. And nails it!).
The guy glues the two parts together. He’s bummed out in the first half, and then from serving as confidant to the differently-bummed-out woman in the second half he gets to feel better. He delivers good character arc and the juxtaposition in styles of bummed-outedness is told and executed well. But the story doesn’t matter.
Cafe Noir is a linear quilt of set pieces and cinematic indulgences, vignette style. There are more than a half dozen scenes you could call music videos, gorgeous music videos with great music: Bach chorales, Korean indie funky dub, opera, Chinese avant-garde. The whole film is melancholy and these “music videos” barely raise its temperature. Except one. A dance number near the end to the middle eastern grooves of **Bill Laswell**. Dance number?
This film is the first born from a guy who was a leading and influential film critic for more than two decades; an intellectual type critic steeped in the **French New Wave** who doesn’t think much of films that simply entertain. There’s a short interview with him at **Hancinema** http://www.hancinema.net/film-critic-puts-his-reputation-on-the-line-in-directing-debut-27040.html that's worth reading.
The film is based on stories by **Goethe** and **Dostoevsky**. Most of the dialog is literary if not poetic. Beyond the inspirations and homages to great works of art, _Cafe Noir_ is also steeped in gobs of **Kim Ki-duk**ian religiosity and the academic musings on love of **Hong Sang-soo**, with plenty of nods to contemporary Korean cinema thrown in--there’s a scene by the Han river where the uncle of the little girl who was killed in _The Host_ talks about his feelings of loss. **So Meta**. The forlorn star of the second half is Hong regular **Jung Yu-Mi**. And it’s not by chance. The scene where she says "fuck you, like you know it all!” will make Hong fans howl. There are also uncredited cameos from other Hong regulars as well as _Beautiful_’s **Cha Soo-Yeon**.
Viewers of the film familiar with Goethe, Dostoevsky and Classic Film auteurs will have a different experience of the film than I did. All that was lost on me (except for some red balloons). What struck _me_ throughout the film was how much it reminded me of early **Hal Hartley**, the director who famously said (something to the effect of) “I don’t want people to act in my films. I want them to deliver lines.” I imagine my feelings of the connectedness to Hartley are really once removed from the inspirations that informed Hartley's own work.
Back to the Bill Laswell dance number. I loved all the musical interludes in the film and felt that if I were familiar with the genres of music he was picking from that I would have picked the same songs ... I was hoping he would pick some obscure number I'm familiar with and love as well. And then two and a half hours into the film, BANG! Not only did he pick a song I know and love but he delivered it just like Hal Hartley did in _Simple Men_ with **Sonic Youth**'s "Kool Thing" (and _Surviving Desire_). The actors just get up and dance to it.
Cafe Noir is stunningly gorgeous. I put it in the same category as **Anh Hung Tran**’s _Vertical Ray of the Sun_ and **Myung-se Lee**’s _M_. You can’t watch the film without acknowledging the mastery of it’s a/v makeup.
I had a couple aborted attempts to watch this film, though. The opening scene is a 5 minute take of a girl staring into the camera eating a cheeseburger. The whole cheeseburger. The second scene is a _Koyaanisqatsi_-esque trip around Seoul. I punted twice.
_Cafe Noir_ is pretentious. It’s grandiose and overwhelming. It’s punishingly thick and multi-layered. It’s over three hours long and languidly paced. Characters in the film don’t talk to one another the way normal people do, they deliver lines. Ten year old girls quote Goethe and pontificate about love with more wisdom than I'll ever possess.
_Cafe Noir_ is the most amazing film experience I’ve had in years.
