The Novelist's Film

Junhee, a well-known novelist, travels to a suburb of Seoul to see a fellow writer she has not spoken to in some time. Sewon now runs a small bookshop there, and the reunion is strained rather than warm. Junhee also encounters a filmmaker who had once intended to adapt one of her novels before withdrawing from the project. Unsettled by her own long silence as a writer, Junhee questions the direction her work has taken. During a walk she meets the actress Gilsu, who seems to be in a similar place of doubt, and the two feel an immediate connection. Junhee proposes that they make a film together.

Hong Sang-soo directed and wrote the screenplay, and produced it with Kim Min-hee, who also plays Gilsu. Lee Hye-young leads the cast as Junhee, with Seo Young-hwa, Park Mi-so, Kwon Hae-hyo and Cho Yun-hee in supporting roles. The film runs 92 minutes and was released on 21 April 2022. It is the eighth of fifteen films Hong directed in chronological order, following Walk Up and preceding In Our Day.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.8 from roughly 1,700 votes, and on TMDB 6.5 from 49 votes. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 29 reviews places it noticeably above both audience scores, suggesting that reviewers responded to it more strongly than general viewers did.