Having long been mired in a writer’s block that she fears might be terminal, celebrated novelist Junhee decides the solution is to try another medium altogether, and sets out make a film. She has an actor, and a cinematographer, but no clear idea of what her film should be about — and that’s okay, she decides, since it will all emerge in time. “Isn’t it too offhand?” a poet friend challenges her. “Don’t you need something to pull people in?” Thus, and not for the first time, does South Korea’s one-man film factory Hong Sangsoo send up his own oeuvre in his 28th feature “The Novelist’s Film,” another gently circuitous, conversation-driven charmer sharing Junhee’s view that “the story is not that important” — but containing more incident and emotion than initially meet the eye.
All Hong films are tangrams to an extent, arriving at slightly…
