Dir. Hong Sang-soo. 2004, 88 mins. 35mm. With Yu Ji-tae, Kim Tae-woo, Seong Hyeon-a. Hong’s first film to receive U.S. distribution, Woman Is the Future of Man stars Yu and Kim as old friends, one an unfaithfully married university art professor and the other a filmmaker recently returned from an unsuccessful stay in the States, both of whom once loved the same woman. On being reacquainted, they decide to revisit together the scenes of their old romance, and to seek out the old flame, with bumbling, mortifying results, in an awkward, boozy reunion which American audiences would come to recognize as something like Hong’s signature scene. “Memory, desire and raw self-interest clash against one another with startling poignancy.” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times).