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The Day He Arrives (2012)

tomatometer

88

Average Rating: 8.2/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 1

No consensus yet.

audience

69

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 372

My Rating

Movie Info

A film director who no longer makes films, Seongjun, arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn't show up, Seongjun wanders the city aimlessly. He runs into an actress he used to know, shares a drink with some film students and against his better judgment, heads to his ex-girlfriend's apartment. The next day goes very much like the last; Seongjun meets the actress, has drinks with friends, and falls for woman who looks remarkably like his ex-girlfriend. Each new day plays out

Unrated,

Drama, Comedy

Nov 6, 2012

$3.3k

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All Critics (17) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (1)

The listless execution may remind you less of 8 1/2 than of Woody Allen's whiny Stardust Memories.

July 6, 2012 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Sang-soo Hong has no profound point to pound home. His story doesn't need an ending. He accepts all the characters just as they are.

July 5, 2012 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Hong abstracts the tense network of fragile relationships to crisp, briskly sketched lines that he adorns with bubbly and self-deprecating humor and graceful wonders...

April 23, 2012 Full Review Source: New Yorker
New Yorker
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Hong offers a strange mixture of magic, mystery, rueful melodrama and dry comedy that's like absolutely nothing else.

April 20, 2012 Full Review Source: Salon.com | Comment (1)
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The movie becomes an exploration, both playful and rueful, of desire, narrative and the idea beautifully expressed by Faulkner in "Absalom, Absalom!" that "maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished."

April 19, 2012 Full Review Source: New York Times
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A 25-words-or-less pitch for The Day He Arrives-shot in luminous black-and-white-might go something like: "Hong Sang-soo does Groundhog Day."

April 17, 2012 Full Review Source: Time Out New York
Time Out New York
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The ideas at the heart of The Day He Arrives are worth puzzling over and the discussion to follow may be the real reward, but the experience is muted.

March 14, 2013 Full Review Source: The Playlist
The Playlist

Off-beat romcom.

November 24, 2012 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Hong may be copying a template from his earlier movies about flailing directors (Like You Know It All, Woman on the Beach), but each film is unique, punctuated by occasional zooms that underline the randomness of existence.

July 19, 2012 Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix
Boston Phoenix

The geometry of human relationships is the main theme of The Day He Arrives.

April 20, 2012 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

Even while The Day He Arrives doesn't come to much-at least not in comparison to some of Hong's other films, such as 2006's brilliant Woman On The Beach-it's still time well spent.

April 19, 2012 Full Review Source: AV Club
AV Club

...maintains a funny and sad focus on its single petulant subject.

April 16, 2012 Full Review Source: indieWIRE
indieWIRE

Modern Korean drama recalls heady games of Godard and Resnais

November 14, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Habit
Movie Habit

I always forget how funny Hong's films are until I'm in the middle of their deadpan variations on a by now standard theme of immature, self-involved men and accommodating women fooling themselves.

October 4, 2011 Full Review Source: House Next Door
House Next Door

The ensemble acting is pitch perfect, and no-frills photography makes Seoul's streets a functional but characterful stage for this subtlest of farces.

May 24, 2011 Full Review Source: Screen International
Screen International

Audience Reviews for The Day He Arrives

A director arrives in Seoul to meet an old friend; he gets drunk, meets various people, and then situations start to repeat with variations, characters who've met before act like they've never been introduced, and he meets a bar owner who looks and acts exactly like his ex-girlfriend. Well made but it's never clear what the movie is trying to say or, more importantly, why we should care.
December 4, 2012
366weirdmovies
Greg S

Super Reviewer

A Korean Groundshog Day!! The same 30 something single man, an accomplished filmmaker who's highly sought after by his fans and thus has no problem getting women, seems to be commitment phobic and finds himself repeating the same evening over and over again with the same players as he persues and toys with perspective love interests. Tongue in cheek comedic humor is subtle as his flirtatious dalliances seem amusing but the use of repetition in the time frame effectively heightens the existential and emotional rut of the disgruntled male lead.
January 16, 2012
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Foreign Titles

  • The Day He Arrives (Book chon bang hyang) (UK)
  • The Day He Arrives (Book chon bang hyang) (CA)
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