Last Dining Table (2006)
In this unique, moving feature, Gyeong-Tae Roh offers a penetrating meditation on the distance between individuals and the hyper-ritualized, technological encounters that replace human connection. In an exquisitely still atmosphere, intermittently punctuated by a soundscape of subtle music and ambient noise, successive individuals enact random, prosaic slices of life. A woman moans before a group of businessmen. A young man takes a handful of pills during a deadening subway ride. Guards subdue a
hysterical man in an institution, while another engages in a serpentine dance.
These spellbinding shards of dramatic action, beautifully acted and photographed, seem strangely unhinged--albeit from specific, unseen narrative situations. Indeed, the attentive eye is eventually rewarded as recurrent characters and situations sketch bare outlines of mini-narratives, each with its own precisely measured moral and metaphorical weight. Almost cubist in its mastery of enigmatically connected patterns, Roh's film achieves its breathtaking affect with austerity and understatement.
--© Sundance Film Festival
