By the Stream

West Coast Premiere

Best Performance, 2024 Locarno Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 New York Film Festival

After a male teacher at an all-girls school is dismissed for sleeping with three of the six students in his play, a junior art professor, Jeo-nim, (Kim Minhee) calls in her famous actor uncle (Kwon Hae-hyo) to take over directing. And while, thankfully, her uncle is almost heartbreakingly humble and pure with the students, his budding relationship with the school’s senior professor (Cho Young) is another story. 

BY THE STREAM is built around two audaciously on-the-nose metaphors. First, flowing water – the eternally changing now, which Jeo-nim weaves into her textiles. And second, the theatrical stage, recalling both filmmaking and “the stages” of life. It’s the shocking simplicity of these metaphors that makes them so powerful. As with the film’s barebones style, they hide nothing behind a mask of technique or false sophistication. Everything is so exposed it’s practically naked.

For the gossip lovers among us, BY THE STREAM offers juicy allusions to both director Hong Sang-soo and Kim Minhee’s extramarital romance, and to Kwon’s off-screen leftist activism. For those of us who’ve been trained by Hong’s increasing minimalism to relish every detail, this film is exhilaratingly giving: we’re talking ten intertwining characters, a runtime over 90 minutes, and Kim Minhee knocking down walls in her first starring role in years. If it sounds like Hong is bringing the whole band on stage and playing the hits, well…the movie does end with a guitar solo.

– Lev Kalman