A man and a woman meet by chance and stroll through Seoul’s changing streets.
The Korean word mimang holds multiple meanings: the inability to understand due to ignorance, the struggle to forget what one wishes to erase, and the idea of a distant search. In Kim Taeyang’s feature film debut, set in Seoul, the camera explores these themes in three parts, capturing the shifts in time, space, and characters that align with these definitions. Filmed over four years in Seoul, the movie vividly portrays the changes in both the characters and the city—particularly in the historic Jongno district—during a couple’s walks down memory lanes.
This film may signal the emergence of a new style in Korean cinema. The photography in this triptych unexpectedly reveals beauty—even romance—in a city often dismissed as oversaturated with tasteless signage.
The use of a telephoto lens brings us close to the characters, yet deliberate framing ensures that we never see the full picture. Kim withholds just enough to keep emotions from fully surfacing, flattening the film’s perspective in a way that mimics the compressing nature of cinema, which condenses a life into a few hours. Despite the emotional distance from the characters, Mimang effectively stirs feelings of nostalgia and longing for a place and people we do not know.
