In Water

A young actor sets out to make a film on Jeju, the rocky, wind-swept island off the Korean coast. His small crew consists of a cinematographer and a woman appearing in front of the camera, and together they wait on location while he struggles to settle on a story worth shooting. He wanders the surroundings, watches the light, and scans the horizon from the shore. When he notices a figure among the rocks at the foot of a cliff and speaks with her, and with an old love song written years earlier in mind, he finally finds something to tell.

Hong Sang-soo directed, wrote and produced the film, his tenth in chronological order, following In Our Day and preceding A Traveler's Needs. Shin Seok-ho plays Seongmo, with Ha Seong-guk as Sangguk and Kim Seung-yun as Namhee; Kim Min-hee, a producer here, voices Seongmo's former girlfriend. The film runs just over an hour and was released in April 2023.

Its ratings sit in moderate territory: on IMDb it stands at 6.4 from 583 votes, while on TMDB it holds 6.7 from 26 votes, a small sample. The critics' rating of 6.7 from 21 reviews is close to the audience scores, suggesting broad if unenthusiastic agreement rather than a sharp divide.