If Godard can find the universe in a coffee cup, Hong extends it to an entire cafe itself, with its visitors spinning around like cream—or, more accurately, like insecure planets, all orbiting a godlike Kim Min-hee, who just might be imagining their narratives as much as she is eavesdropping on them. (Her ambiguous role is paralleled in Hong's uncanny use of classical music, which veers between the awkwardly diegetic and carefully embedded.) Can't recall another film where the final scene reversed my evaluation as much as this one: until then, this appeared disappointingly thin and scattered, lacking the structural or thematic framework of Hong at his best, but then he brings it all together in one unifying shot, with Kim's nonchalant decision to join a group of strangers carrying the weight of a religious incarnation—a creator, in effect, diving into the emotions of her own creation.
