The Day After

“Can words create reality?” a character asks in this, one of Hong’s most straightforward attempts at dissecting how humans use language to define, refine, and excuse their actions. A literary office is the fitting frame as a handful of characters—including a philandering middle-aged publisher, his pissed-off wife, his departing lover, and a mystified new office assistant luckless enough to arrive on the wrong day—spill out their dreams, desires, and most of all excuses, then do it all again, hoping to finally hit at the most convincing description. “A lovely, intricately fractured story—past and present seamlessly slip into each other” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).