Money can get so tight it constricts. When it does, it puts pressure on your movements and blots out all the other thoughts in your mind. Whole days are structured by its necessity and its lack. In Park Song-yeol’s second feature film, NAJENEUN DEOPGO BAMENEUN CHUPGO (Hot in Day, Cold at Night), money is all there is, which is to say there isn’t very much of it at all. The couple at the centre of the film, Young-tae (played by Park) and Jeong-hee (Won Hyang-ra, the film’s producer and co-writer), find themselves searching frantically for jobs to stay afloat. The traps of the modern economy are swirling all around them: pyramid schemes, loan sharks, and unscrupulous friends in the same jam they are. In an early, sweet scene as the couple attempt to map out job prospects, the husband smiles, frowns, smiles, and frowns. He gets a slight grin from his wife in return. You can feel the stress of the situation, but at least at in this moment they are not alone. Were it not handled so lightly the film would be a despairing one. What is most surprising, and most pleasurable, about a narrative following gig workers in their struggle to make ends meet is that it is a comedy, even if a dark one.
Means and ways
The story ultimately revolves less around the search for a job than the couple’s efforts to manage debt. Although the two are not quite willing to admit it to themselves, at least out loud, they are at their wits’ end. They sleep beside one another on a mattress and, as the film goes along, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a moment of intimacy taking place there. An insidious economic pressure has opened a chasm between them and each attempts to face it separately. Young-tae, who is paying off a camera on an instalment plan, loans the device to a friend so that he can film children’s birthday parties. The friend keeps inventing excuses not to return it and Young-tae finds himself trying to pay for an object that he might not own anymore.
The traps of the modern economy are swirling all around them: pyramid schemes, loan sharks, and unscrupulous friends in the same jam they are in.
Meanwhile, Jeong-hee, sensing how dire the situation has become, tries to secure a private loan. The scene deftly combines a scene of menace and absurdity. The less-than-convincing pair of loan sharks meet her inside their car, an excellent location if your goal is to trap someone. Yet in their exchange they can neither pull off the slick, false friendliness of a banker with a client, nor the threatening aura of the gangster with its mark. In their attire and demeanour, they seem more like a middle-class couple out for lunch than a dynamic duo well versed in the grayer areas of the law. In order to better look Jeong-Hee in the eyes, one lender keeps moving their front seat backwards and forwards before lifting the headrest off. It’s amateurish, deflating the sense of intimidation necessary for the job. That might be the point: loan sharks don’t really need to be that good at their job so long as there are people out there more desperate for money than they are.
The Mystery of money
Filmmakers have long struggled with the question of how to portray the working class, the precariat, the downwardly mobile; in short, all those who make up the designation of “less well-off”, and as such are least likely to be present inside the rooms that decide how a film gets made, or if it gets made at all. This is often a question of writing: how do they sound? Is the portrayal positive or negative? Do they give in to stereotypes? But there is also the problem of form. Narrative cinema has developed an expansive toolkit in its relatively short existence. Much of it is expensive to produce, even if we are not speaking of blockbusters. As in life, money is a mystery on sets. A filmmaker gathers everybody together to prepare the shoot and already the funds start disappearing. Park builds his films from the means available to him. Locked off shots and limited actors provide the space for a rigorous mode of observation and a physical, rather than editorial, comedy.
Park builds his films from the means available to him. Locked off shots and limited actors provide the space for a rigorous mode of observation and a physical, rather than editorial, comedy.
The effect of this is a film that moves in waves. It is episodic, but not quite picaresque; either Jeong-hee or Young-tae would have to be more devilish and cunning than they are for that to be true. The episodes are more honest to life: people wait, they search, they apply for jobs and try to negotiate the balance between their dignity and their duty. These are not explosive plot points, though there is shouting and betrayal, moments that Park treats as inflections rather than great turns. Life accumulates. So, too, does the weight of the slights and invective hurled at them by both customers and predatory potential bosses. Jeong-hee and Young-tae are not working class heroes out to upend the world. They are trying to make do and make a home, which at times seems even more difficult. Their actions are not always wise or explicable, but this is where Park’s patience pays off. When Jeong-hee’s mother asks her why her daughter didn’t ask her for help, the camera watches her sit silently. On her face we watch, and project, the effect of the question. It’s more upsetting than any answer she might have given.
In the end, Young-tae must make a choice. It is a small one, but it is a chance to tip the scales in his favour for once. The film is patient, giving him all the time in the world to decide. When he did, I laughed and then choked down the laugh. It’s a bitter joke. Much is these days.
Blair McClendon is a writer, editor and filmmaker who lives in New York.
