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Buckland-Warren-Puzzle-Films-Complex-Storytelling-Contemporary-Cinema

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Hong Sangsoo’s The Day a Pig Fell into a Well 213the restaurant’s window as she waits for the traffic light to change. A returnto restricted narration in subsequent shots shows Minjae’s visit to thedubbing studio (the narration is therefore restricted to Minjae). However,nothing of her return to work is shown. Instead, immediately after a shotof her receiving payment in the dubbing studio for her work, a return toomniscient narration shows Minsu’s arrival in the theater lobby and hiscryptic statement to the theater owner that he has something to tell him.In the next shot, a return to restricted narration shows Minjae seatedin the theater’s ticket office as Minsu knocks on the door and tells her,somewhat diffidently, that she needs to make up an excuse for her earlierabsence because the theater owner knows that she went out without permission.From these shifts in narration, we can construe, retrospectively,that Minsu has told the theater owner about her absence. Consequently,we can construe, as well, that he has done this self-servingly, so he can warnMinjae as though he were watching out for her best interests.The alternations of restricted and omniscient narrations have a considerablymore important effect after Bokyung leaves the note wedged inHyosup’s apartment door asking him to telephone her after he returns. OnceBokyung leaves, a shift to omniscient narration shows Hyosup’s neighborsome time later as she retrieves the note and takes it into her apartmentto read. Restricted narration is reestablished when Bokyung returns toHyosup’s apartment that night and sees that the note she had carefully wedgedinto the door is no longer there. She knocks on the door, but gets no responseand leaves. After her departure, omniscient narration reveals the scene insidethe apartment that Bokyung – and the viewers because of restricted narrationup to this moment – could not see: Minsu has killed Minjae andHyosup.Consequently, we know why Hyosup failed to meet her at the bus stationthat morning or return her messages as well as what, most likely,Bokyung will mistakenly construe from the disappearance of the note. Whilewe know that Hyosup is dead, Bokyung is likely to conclude from the disappearanceof her note that he has read it. And from this will follow, probably,a chain of mistaken conclusions: that he no longer cares for her, thathe has changed his mind about going away with her, and, as a result, thathe has spent the day avoiding her rather than admit all of this to her. And,quite likely, these mistaken conclusions will lead her later that night to stopresisting her husband’s sexual assault. (In the film’s first part she assuredHyosup that she no longer had sexual relations with her husband. If shehas mistakenly concluded from the missing note that Hyosup did not love

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