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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Not a pig or a well in the entire film, 14 May 2004
Author: liehtzu from Korea

The debut film by the great Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo may have a bit more going on dramatically than the later ones, but it also shows many of the trademarks that would achieve more polish as Hong refined his rambling, low-key style. "The Day a Pig Fell in the Well" is a fine debut, and the director carries it off with the assurance of a pro. Hong's always liked to portray loser men and the women that suffer them (he's a kindred spirit of the great Japanese director Naruse Mikio), and he's come up with a pair of real sad-sacks here. A failed writer leaches off of a girl who's smitten with him; meanwhile he latches onto a married woman, and demands that she only sleep with him. Her traveling businessman husband is a manic-compulsive who mopes over a family falling to pieces and a wife that will no longer touch him.

Hong's structure here is similar to the films he'd make later: each of the main characters gets a section of the movie and we slowly learn how their lives relate to each other. In "Pig," Hong punctuates his typically languidly paced scenes with clips of the characters' dreams and flashbacks, a technique that he'd ditch in favor of a more straightforward approach by his next film. Hong is a sharp guy and wants you to pay attention to the details (though his seemingly haphazard style initially gives a very improvised and random impression). Minor details or people who make cameos in one section of the film become major factors or players later on, whereas things or people that come off as potentially important in the beginning might only briefly be mentioned in a later section or play no part at all. The director's always mined the ways in which chance and fate play a part in human relationships (this theme is probably best represented in the superb "Power of Kangwon Province"), and the ways in which people fail to make the right decision when presented with a possible way out of the pit they've dug themselves into. Hong's first film is also his darkest; it's lacking in the occasional dry humor of the later pictures and it's only one where the path ends in bloodshed for any of the characters. "Pig" packs a quiet punch and has recently been voted one of the greatest Korean films ever made by critics there. It has also finally got a DVD release in Korea (the rest of the director's films are also on DVD), though the English subtitles are rather poor.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Bye Bye, Piggie, 10 October 2004
Author: Meganeguard from Kansas

Having never watched a Hong Sang Su film, I did not know what to expect as I tore the cellophane off of this DVD. After having watched this film, I am still not sure what to think of it. I was intrigued at first because I like novels and movies about writers, and the character Hyo Seob sums up what it is to be a struggling writer who at one point in his career was not only a successful writer, but also a university lecturer. However, it seems that although he is poor in monetary means he is rich in love. He in fact has two women who love him: A 24 year old former co-worker and a very attractive married woman. However, even with these strings of affection, Hyo Seob still loses control and repeatedly gets drunk which leads to not only physical harm, but also damages his already stagnate career. The only thing that seems to give Hyo Seob even moderately happy is that the married woman, Bo Kyeong, has ceased having sexual relations with her husband which gives him sole possession of at least that.

Bo Kyeong comes off to be a very unhappy woman. There is no affection between her and her husband and the only glimmers of light in her life centers around Hyo Seob, who is "cheating" on her with a young woman 11 years his junior.

Dong Wu, Bo Kyeong's husband, spends most of his time working. He tries to keep a cool facade, but a few times in the film his crafted mask breaks. Because he is no longer having sex with his wife, Dong Wu looks to prostitutes to fill his desires. While on one trip he has sex with a prostitute and does not use a condom which causes much tension throughout the remainder of the film.

The young woman who is dating Hyo Seob, in my opinion, is the saddest character in the film. She gives all of her love to a man, who although a tad affectionate, seems to think of her as little more than a vessel for his sexual desires and a proof reader. She works a number of small jobs just to make ends meet. Even doing voices for pornographic cartoons. One of the bleakest moments in the film is when she goes to see Hyo Seob on his birthday and Bo Kyeong is there. This scene ends with Hyo Seob slapping her viciously several times while she continues to state how much she loves him.

This is definitely not a light hearted film. It is quite heavy and slow, but quite poignant.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Hong Sang-Soo's first is his best, 11 February 2006
Author: Atavisten from Tellus

Having watched Hong Sang-Soo's three first movies in a row, I see that he has the potential of making quite different movies with the same technique. He shows us different characters one at a time that is somehow related to some of the other and the power of it lies in how he can make it look so naturally and casual and still craft a story around it. The small episodes are sometimes so strikingly close to real life that you wonder how they work at the set to make the actors be so much themselves.

This first of his movies is his most tragic. The writer (I wonder how much he bases his characters on himself as the writer/director is quite a recurring theme for him) is endlessly full of him self, leading a miserable existence that pulls the two (married) women who cares for him somewhere bleak. His behaviour is provoking and with no respect, but he still gets loved. Something he cynically use for sexual release.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Dramatic and Clearly Shows Hong's Unique Take, 30 May 2008
8/10
Author: J Chang from United States

The Day a Pig Fell into the Well is director Hong Sang-Soo's first major feature, circa 1996. You can tell its age because of the lack of technical sophistication in the picture. It's also a lot less subtle than director Hong's later works, but you can easily see his rather observational sense of comedy, his use of irony and his use of relationship triangles (or larger) to expose human folly that he would continue to use in his future features.

Of all the director's films I've seen, this is perhaps the most disturbing and brutal. There are multiple story lines present in the film and it's structured by following each individual character's story consecutively, rather than intercut with each other. This leads to a very interesting series of discoveries about different seemingly ancillary characters and encourages rewatching to see the movie with more context. It can be a little frustrating on the first view, because things seem to happen without reason or cause, but you see later on that they are fully explainable and add another dimension to the stories that you didn't see before.

The stories themselves seem to be themed by the loneliness and dysfunctional relationships that each character possesses and the events that propel them to their conclusions. The characters include a struggling writer with anger issues, a lonely businessman, a lovestruck young woman, and a housewife with fidelity issues.

The content and story are actually surprisingly interesting, the acting is strong. The overall direction clearly shows that director Hong wasn't yet a steady hand at visual storytelling, but this he would develop later. His style, nascent as it is, is clearly evoked, especially in his choice of framing and of his choices for panning/tracking. The technical aspects of the film are a little weak, but as should be expected from this era in Corean film-making.

While clearly a novice film, this film is still remarkably striking and bears the stamp of an auteur. Hong will go on to make more accessible pictures as well as complete some more artistic experiments, but this is where it all started for him and his sense of irony shines through brightly. It's a heavy film, but worthwhile for people who like their irony and intensity. Not for those who like glossy fun-filled entertainment. 8/10.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
A failed artist or a sad tale of human relationships ! ! ! !, 15 February 2008
8/10
Author: Lalit Rao (cpowerccc@yahoo.com) from Paris, France

Watching Hong Sang Soo's first film "Daijiga umule pajinnal" is going to be an extremely uneasy visual experience for all casual as well as average viewers.This is because one will surely find it hard to understand whether the film is a portrait of a failed artist or an absurdist tale of highly unusual,bizarre human relationships.I managed to see this film at the campus of Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines at Lyon in company of a friend from South Korea.She made the viewing interesting for me with her comic remarks as being a Korean person,she is definitely more familiar with intricacies of Korean cultural life.This key association with Korean psyche is needed to understand what this film stands for.A word about our film's failed artist.He is rather controversial,bit moody and picks up fights too often with his colleagues.This is something which might be true of many talented artists all over the world.A different view of this film might concern Hong Sang Soo's observation that his film is a complex tale of human relationships as all the characters of his films are in troubled relationships without ascertaining what made them enter into them.

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2 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
The one of most intellectual movie in Korean film history., 12 September 2000
Author: disole-2 (disole@hanmail.net) from London, UK

The magnificent plot about an enervated author, who has cheated on two women, has been made up in absolutely silent atmosphere. The director Hong kept his temper about debut obsession. This movie totally looks like made by well-experienced artisan. And all lively character's lines make audience be immersed in those. Fantastic! Don't miss it.

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