Hong Sang-soo’s brilliantly bleak third film announced the arrival of a master.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors is a clever, complicated portrayal of all the little pitfalls, miscommunications, and manipulations that characterize modern relationships between men and women.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors presents human relations as complicated, unworkable, and opaque.

Once more, Hong Sang-soo puts his main subject in the background, instead focusing on playing with time, and through time, with his audience, through a distinct sense of irony that permeates the film.