South Korean director Hong Sang-Soo has been known for sly obliqueness since his first feature, The Day a Pig Fell Down the Well. There was no pig in it, and it never fell down the well: the title simply evoked that particular convoluted, ill-fated spell in its characters' lives. Hong specialises in slow-building narratives with a jigsaw feel, that fall gently and seductively into place if you give them time, and if you're willing to keep an eye out for the fine details of his characters' everyday traumas.
Hong's third film - originally and more concisely titled Oh! Soojung - is another structurally intricate story, this time about urban romance. It begins in a hotel room, where awkward young Jaehoon wonders whether his girlfriend Soojung - the virgin of the title - will turn up. We skip back to the start of their relationship, through seven chapters in which the couple meet, become lovers, have their first awkward attempts at sex, fall out, reunite, and arrange their hotel rendezvous. Then, after an enigmatic interlude in a stuck cable car, Hong repeats the seven chapters, but with notable variations. We learn new things about Soojung's life, notably that she has an awkward flirtation going with her film-maker boss. And we see events taking subtly different turns: the same dinners are eaten in the same restaurants as before, but with different people getting drunk and disgracing themselves.
Between sections, as if to mock our confusion, a jangling piano provides a mocking, sardonic commentary on the whole affair. The two versions of Jaehoon and Soojung's romance are not so much alternatives as parallels.
Hong is interested in slight but telling differences that at once cancel out and complement each other, as if to underline the provisional nature of experience, and especially the provisional, happenstance nature of cinema's supposedly destined love stories. Hong is a film-maker in full control, and not only narratively. The film is shot in crisp, wintry black and white, and long takes allow the drama to unwind at its own sweet, unpredictable pace, often taking unexpected detours into bittersweet farce. Chilly and distant though it sometimes feels, Virgin is never less than engrossing, and, true to its devious, fragmented construction, is even more rewarding the second time.
Screenings at the NFT today and the ICA on Saturday. Box office: 020-7928 3232.
