IN WATER (MUL-AN-E-SEO) Luminaries

Desperate to make a film, former actor Seongmo drags two friends to popular vacation spot Jeju Island during the chilly offseason. Waiting for inspiration to strike, they wander the island scouting potential locations, eating junk food and pondering the finer points of love and art. When he spots a woman picking up trash off the beach, a kernel of an idea for his film begins to form. Stripping his already bare-bones aesthetic down to its core, prolific Korean master Hong Sang-soo experiments with varying degrees of focus. With mesmerizing impressionistic vistas and fuzzy faces, we’re challenged to see beyond the blurriness, finding true beauty in Seongmo’s melancholic musings. Hong is as sharp as ever (focus be damned), delivering another revelatory film about the artists’ struggle that will stay with you long beyond its bite-sized runtime. –Josh Gardner