Screen International by Allan Hunter
The forlorn feel of Hotel By The River becomes increasingly endearing, and there is a strain of bone dry humour that lightens the mood.
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Korea · 2019
1h 36m
Director Hong Sang-soo
Starring Ki Joo-bong, Kim Min-hee, Song Seon-mi, Kwon Hae-hyo
Genre Drama
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An aging poet, convinced he’s on the verge of death, invites his two estranged sons to join him at a riverside hotel. They spend the day together wrapping up loose ends in this somber and wintry black-and-white drama grounded in melancholy and realism.
Screen International by Allan Hunter
The forlorn feel of Hotel By The River becomes increasingly endearing, and there is a strain of bone dry humour that lightens the mood.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
The sorrowful situations are frequently laced with chuckles,
A story of a poet, Hotel by the River comes to resemble a poetry collection itself, abounding in emotional currents and grace notes that are bracingly allowed to hang, free of reductive explication.
The relatively gentle, meditative, and straightforward Hotel by the River is like everything and nothing that Hong has made before; to say that it’s “just another Hong” movie is an accurate way of emphasizing what makes it special.
As a forlorn kind of hangout movie, then, Hotel by the Sea proceeds at a pleasing shuffle, spiked with bittersweet humor and even a gentle, surprising hint of sentimentality.
The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi
Slow-paced and meditative, Hotel by the River is a director’s plunge into a milieu where chuckles go hand in hand, often to ambiguous and conflicting extents, with a melancholic bracing for death.
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