焕熙的脸庞

The face of Hwanhee is the second feature film by director Lee Jeahan, who previously directed the tender and delicate debut film, Sophie’s World (2021). Composed of four chapters— House of a writer, The Visitors, To the never never land, and The face of Hwanhee—the film unfolds like a collection of short stories, and can be experienced as such. In this narrative, Hwanhee is neither anyone nor nobody. The four stories, which feature a student visiting a teacher, an unwelcome guest at a restaurant, a man contemplating studying abroad and his girlfriend and his mother, and a novelist and a reader, each contain stories within stories. They traverse freely between night and day, fact and truth, narrative and image, within and outside the frame, dream and reality, actors and characters, the singular and the plural, and chance and fate, stimulating all the senses. The face of Hwanhee presents four curious adventures of Hwanhee and Hwanhee’s neighbors, where structure creates mood and mood shapes the world, making for a fascinating journey.