
After an affair with a married man, actress Younghee decides to take some time out. She travels to the far-off, city of Hamburg. In a conversation with a friend she asks herself if her lover will follow her and whether he misses her as much as she misses him. During her long walks through wintry parks and along riverbanks, she attempts to make clear of this illicit relationship with the director.... (Full plot summary below)
Enjoy FREE movies and series with your Prime (USA) subscription or when you start a 30-day free trial!
Links compiled using automated software. Availability of offers subject to change / might be region specific / out of date.
After an affair with a married man, actress Younghee decides to take some time out. She travels to the far-off, city of Hamburg. In a conversation with a friend she asks herself if her lover will follow her and whether he misses her as much as she misses him. During her long walks through wintry parks and along riverbanks, she attempts to make clear of this illicit relationship with the director.
Leave your thoughts about On the Beach at Night Alone.
| The New YorkerRichard BrodyFor all its intimacy, the drama has a vast scope, a fierce intensity, and an element of metaphysical whimsy (including one of the great recent dream sequences), which all come to life in the indelibly expressive spontaneity of Kim’s performance. |
| Village VoiceBilge EbiriKnowing the real-life inspiration for On the Beach at Night Alone may help one appreciate the film’s moral trajectory a bit better. But the movie’s charms work on a much more immediate level, in the way it captures the ever-shifting dynamic between men and women, and the difficulty of matching one’s feelings to one’s words. |
| The PlaylistJessica Kiangwhether because of its personal nature, its occasional ferocity, its unusually dark undercurrents, its audacious defiance of expectation and explanation or Kim Min-hee’s essential performance, On The Beach At Night Alone feels like it will be exceptional even for longtime diehard Hong fans. |
| The Film StageRory O'ConnorOn the Beach at Night Alone, a bittersweet tone poem from South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo, thinks many a thought about the universe and the future, mostly expressed through nature and the characters’ anxieties about growing old. |
| San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonOn the Beach at Night Alone is really Kim’s film. Her performance won her the best actress award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and she is in every scene, warts and all. |
| The New York TimesA.O. ScottMs. Kim is simultaneously an ordinary woman and a melodramatic heroine, her performance made more layered and intriguing by the intimation that she may be playing herself. |
| Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOn the Beach at Night Alone isn’t as accomplished as Hong’s 2015 collaboration with Kim, the masterfully bifurcated “Right Now, Wrong Then.” But it’s more than worth seeing for Kim’s exposed nerve endings alone, and also for the way in which Hong’s typically playful sensibility seems to tilt at times into a surreal, menacing strangeness. |
| The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloIt’s also somehow simultaneously one of his (Hong Sang-soo) most straightforward, emotionally direct movies and the weirdest damn thing he’s ever made. |
| Slant MagazineChuck BowenHong Sang-soo simultaneously positions filmmaking as the ultimate act of atonement and evasion, eviscerating himself so that he may live to stage several more films about the futility of getting hammered and worshipping and bedding gorgeous young women. |
| VarietyGuy LodgeUnfussy in form, open in expression and gentle in reach as its maker revisits such recurring preoccupations as loneliness, regret and the value of love in life and art. |