SXSW Film

Daytime Drinking

Narrative Feature, Special Screenings

Sometime near the middle of Daytime Drinking, stranded somewhere close to the middle of nowhere, lead twentysomething Hyuk-jin (Sam-dong) realizes the owner of the pension where he's been staying has mistaken him for someone else. "If you're not him," asks the owner, "who are you?" It's a baffling question, one that lies at the center of this sweet, pastoral narrative, which would qualify as a road movie if Hyuk-jin could manage to make it out of the South Korean province where he's mired after his friends, who agreed to meet there during a dudely drinking bout, have stood him up. Instead, he lets adventure come to him, in the form of strangers with blurry agendas and large amounts of alcohol. The slippery nature of identity is underscored by confusion around characters with the same name, relational mix-ups, and duplicitous behavior; the honors-seminar symbolism is there, but there is also a great deal of lightness and wit in this traditional, modern coming-of-age story.

Thursday, March 19, 11:30am, Alamo South Lamar