Tale of Cinema

Hong first began to play with cinema’s forms with this appropriately titled work, which plaintively begins with two impromptu lovers deciding on a vaguely defined suicide pact, only to then (almost literally) close the theater door on that film and continue instead with another involving two audience members and their possible connections to the first tale. What’s real in both versions, though, is Hong’s almost ethnographic focus on the human animal, its awkwardness, vanity, and self-doubt. “A key work in the first phase of Hong’s career, Tale of Cinema is something like a Rosetta Stone for his subsequent twice-told tales” (Dennis Lim).