THE DECEPTIVE DESIGN OF HONG SANGSOO'S VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS

Abstract

Sandwiched between sequences set in the present, Hong Sangsoo's unusually structured Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Oh!, Soojung!, 2000) twice presents the history of a couple's developing relationship from its beginning to the day before the film's present time. Critics assume that the first telling represents the man's point of view, while the second presents events from the woman's point of view. And because at certain points the two retellings appear to differ in detail, critics further assume that the couple's remembrances are contradictory and, therefore, that the film is a study in the ambiguity of memory. However, a careful analysis of the two retellings confirms that they are perfectly consistent with one another and have been misread by critics who have failed to notice subtle temporal cues that explain the apparent differences. In a process that mirrors the struggle of the woman to look past the superficial qualities of the man in order to perceive his true motives and values, then, the film challenges viewers to discard the conventional expectations they bring to this apparently fragmented, modernist film in order to perceive Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors as its own structure demands.