‘By the Stream’ Review: Hong Sangsoo’s Wry, Strangely Sweet Ode to Art, Love and Eel
Guy Lodge Film Critic “By the Stream,” the 32nd feature by Hong Sangsoo, opens as many of the previous 31 have, with a polite meeting between two softly acquainted people — neither strangers nor as familiar to each other as they might once have been. Tentative pleasantries are exchanged, before one says to the other, “You haven’t changed at all.” It’s a premature observation, of course: The ensuing action, such as it is, shows either how much has changed between the two, or how much they’ve forgotten along the way.