Walk Up - AFI Fest
Hong Sang-soo’s Walk Up is a calm, warm film that wonders about the simplicity of everyday life.
A filmmaker visits his friend at the building she rents out. Inside the building are two apartments, a restaurant, an attic, a cellar, and a terrace. Each floor of the building embodies its personality, and altogether the building serves as a metaphor for the emotions and challenges involved in creating art, food, or domesticity. When filmmaker Byung-soo first arrives at the walk-up, he is unaware that he is about to spend some time in his life in a single building, expressed through a few afternoons with three different women.
Walk Up begins with Byung-soo bringing his aspiring interior design daughter, Jeong-su, to meet Ms. Kim to tour the empty building. A restaurant occupies the first and second floors, a cozy apartment remains on the third, and the fourth contains a man who doesn’t pay his rent but is about to move out. The tour ends with a glass of wine in Ms. Kim’s work studio. While enjoying drinks, the filmmaker receives a call that he needs to meet someone. The two ladies are left alone with a few bottles of wine. Jeong-su uses their time alone to beg Ms. Kim to take her on as an assistant. Their conversation ends when they realize there is no more wine, so the young woman volunteers to fetch another bottle. Soft guitar music strums as she walks down the street bringing the first part of the film to a close.
The same building comes into view as Byung-soo meets Ms. Kim. What looks like a follow-up meeting between the two, but is another version of the same day until Ms. Kim brings up how his daughter quit. They dine on the second floor sharing a meal and are joined by the chef, who is a fan of his work. The focus is on the interactions between all three: Byung-soo’s production has fallen apart, the chef attempting to explain why she likes his movies, and their eventual conversation surrounding religion. As the conversation wraps and the wine bottles empty, Byung-soo heads to the balcony for a smoke, and the same guitar music starts again.
As the audience catches on to the environment they are in, director Hong Sang-soo changes it up in the film’s third arc. Another opening scene of the building comes into view, but it is the restaurant owner who drives up to the building and proceeds to the third floor. Byung-soo and her are now sharing an apartment. He is facing deteriorating health and is planning his retirement from filmmaking. The restaurant owner's sales are declining while Ms. Kim is raising the rent on them. With this new setup, the audience must put together the details given in the beginning to gain a sense of where in the story they are. By the time the fourth arch of the film takes other, Byung-soo is now on the fourth floor becoming the reclusive man.
Director Hong Sang-soo successfully creates a chronological timeline based on the initial tour given by Ms. Kim that can be divided up into two perspectives. Walk Up presents the life of Byung-soo with four-part episodes that lead to a larger goal of decline. As his life plays out in this single building; he grows distant from the women in his life, as well as his declining health and career leading to his reclusiveness. Another perspective is that it is a collection of afternoons in present time feeling like they are the same event played out in different variants that are not attached to any timeline. The closing sequence leaves a gray space between these two perspectives.
In all these scenarios, the buildiing remains a constant serving as a place for art, commerce, and relationships. Hong Sang-soo takes a simple premise, and uses it to experiment with storytelling asking his audience to immerse themselves in a rewarding ending.