Nimbly moving between its two threads and separated by humorously scene-setting intertitles, the film unfolds like a novella as it tells the seemingly unrelated stories of, respectively, a disenchanted former actress (Kim Min-hee) who has returned to Seoul to decompress at a friend’s (Song Seon-mi) apartment, and an alcoholic poet (Ki Joo-bong) visited in his home by a student filmmaker (Kim Seung-yun) working on a short documentary about the middle-aged artist. In each, a third party—a cousin (Park Miso) of the actor in the first scenario; a young admirer (Ha Seong-guk) of the poet in the second—arrives to disrupt the dynamic, prompting existential and artistic musings between the characters that echo across the plot divide. As in many Hong films, similar themes arise in both strands, as do specific details, such as pet cats, estranged loved ones and bowls of ramen noodles spiced with pepper paste. Here, though, the motifs relate loosely, relying on association and symbolic resonance rather than the kind of iterative logic or regenerative synergies that typically resolve (or at least work to explain) the director’s idiosyncratically shaped narratives. With In Our Day, Hong continues to forge a roundabout path through his obsessions, finding fertile new ground through the smallest of gestures and slightest of variations. – Jordan Cronk