By the Stream Film Review: The Magic of Second Chances

Hong Sang-soo’s By the Stream is an intimate and extraordinarily profound look at how the gift of self-realization can surprise us at any age.

In his latest film, writer and director Sang-soo delicately examines how the gifts we associate with youth, like chances to find love or new avenues for self-actualization, do not leave us as we age but actually have a funny way of finding us when we most need it. 

By the Stream opens with the reunion of Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo), a director who was once very successful, and Jeonim (Kim Minhee), his niece who has become an artist and teacher in Seoul. They are rekindling their relationship after 10 years of not speaking. Jeonim, now a teacher at the university Chu Sieon once attended, reached out asking her uncle to step in to direct a short theater piece for her students in light of their previous director being let go from the production for having inappropriate relationships with multiple of the student actresses. Chu Sieon, now working as an owner of a fairly quiet bookshop, uses this opportunity to reconnect with his niece and revisit one of the biggest landmarks of his youth. 

While Jeonim and Chu Sieon are initially cautious about reuniting with one another, they are aided by Jeonim’s mentor, school headmaster Professor Jeong (Cho Yunhee), who also happens to be a massive admirer of Chu Sieon and his work. Through this opportunity to reconnect with his niece and step back into the shoes of a director, Chu Sieon is forced to examine the mistakes of his past while being faced with the opportunity to completely change his future. 

Hong Sang-soo’s film is intentional with its run time, lingering between Chu Sieon, Jeonim and Professor Jeong as they try to grapple with feelings of loneliness and inadequacy that have been exacerbated by age. The majority of the film’s scenes are long shots of the central trio sharing a meal and getting progressively more intoxicated and having conversations that grow more revealing by the minute. By the Stream serves as an intimate character study of three people lost at sea, connected by their feelings of otherness that separate them from society. 

Chu Sieon goes through the world with a polite lightness. It can be pinpointed as a desire to not disturb the world any further than he already has through the many ambiguous mistakes of his past. He comes to Jeonim with a longing to be indoctrinated back into family life through any means. This isn’t to say his intentions are malicious but rather that his agreeing to help Jeonim is actually a pleading to be reconsidered as someone worthy of being a part of someone, anyone else’s life. 

Here lies the heart of By The Stream as Chu Sieon’s desire to no longer go through life alone is echoed by the stories of Jeonim and Professor Jeong. While all three of the film’s leads are doing well enough for themselves in their own right, there is a nagging void that refuses to allow them to be happy. 

Professor Jeong is admired by her students, but lonely. She says she has saved up $1 million dollars because she has nothing and no one to spend money on. She is not interested in travel, not alone at least, she does not want designer goods or anything else material. Professor Jeong’s only vice is taking her students out to nice meals. She even goes as far as to say this is the only reason she believes her students like her, although she clearly has made a very life-changing and lasting impact on Jeonim and many students like her. 

Jeonim is a bit lost. She seems professionally satiated but morally conflicted.  She wants to welcome her uncle back into her life, but she cannot let his tense relationship with her mother go unanswered. She is stuck between the longing to know her uncle, to be close with this man she has a spiritual kinship to and the feeling of being a little kid stuck in the middle of a fight between two adults. 

As Chu Sieon grows closer to Professor Jeong, Jeonim is further conflicted because, while she loves them both, she begins to feel like an afterthought in both their minds. Although she is 40 years old, she still deals with an almost child-like desire for attention from these two hugely important parental figures in her life. 

The pacing of By the Stream is lackadaisical. It refuses to be rushed, staying in each scene almost at the behest of the characters within the film. At times it feels like the camera is the only entity that can see Chu Sieon, Jeonim and Professor Jeong in their entirety. So many others in these character’s lives have passed them over or moved on from them without a second thought; it feels like once these characters are able to find each other, they are finally able to be seen. 

In this way, Sang-Soo is giving these fictional characters the only chance they’ve ever been given for redemption. By the Stream focuses on and elegantly captures one of the rare second chances some very lucky people are rewarded in life; whether it be Chu Sieon’s second chance at making an impact as a director, Professor Jeong’s second chance at love or Jeonim’s second chance at her relationship with her uncle, this trio is showing audiences that self-actualization is not only for the young.

By the Stream will have its US premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 4-11, 2024. Read our review of Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs!