Tale of Cinema

What do you do with film about a good-for-nothing jerk with a ridiculously inflated sense of himself trying to talk a beautiful actress into a double suicide modeled after a pretentious short film? I don’t know about you, I want horrible violence to visit upon our “hero.” In other words, I want him in a Miike Takeshi movie. I am saying that you can’t have a protagonist like this, but the film better go somewhere with him. Hong Sang-Soo didn’t go anywhere with Tongsu in “Tale of Cinema 劇場傳.” In the end, it was just a pale monologue: “I have find some reason to live.” Big deal! There is nothing in the heart of its main character and nothing beyond that emptiness. Why even make this film? Pretension is all that I can come up with. Oh, yeah, he did get her drunk and slept with her, something to report to the world, I suppose.