Daylight drinking

Road movies are a favoured genre for telling an episodic story that takes one or more characters from A to a life-changing B position. Original variations on that theme are difficult to imagine, and a novice South Korean director chose to follow a path taken in the USA by Sideways, finding truths through booze.

Young-seok Noh's Daytime Drinking is a one-man labour of love of movies on his first credited work - as its writer, director, cameo actor, cinematographer, music composer, production designer, editor, sound controller and producer! The end credits show that he'd employed various technical staff to back him up. Most important, he recruited an exceptional cast of acting unknowns.

The lead character is spotty-faced plumpish Hyuk-jin (Sam-dong Song), a young man just dumped by his girlfriend. His drinking buddies suggest they all cheer him up by going to a mountainous resort area for R&R and boozing. When he gets there, at the little-visited height of snowy winter, he learns they've abandoned the idea and he's on his own.

A series of mildly bizarre and/or comic escapades lead Hyuk-sin from one disastrous female to another, from robbers to sexual gropers, from hitching in his underwear to finally meeting up with the best friend who'd suggested the trip and has a good reason for feeling extra guilty. The only connection between everyone is the strangers' passion for alcohol, from cheap Korean soju plonk to local whisky and potent home brews.

Much of the time the camera simply sits in a visibly cold setting recording conversations that travel from bashful chitchat to despair, dipsomaniac farce or surrealistic drollery. Nearly a dozen richly detailed and well-acted characters, offbeat but entirely credible, cross the lost young man's confused path to nowhere, which ends up at the hopeful start of another bus journey into the strikingly harsh Korean scenery.

A small low-budget calling-card for the director, the movie is a charmingly modest first step for a director exhibiting no pretensions or wild ambitions.