’By Another Name’ review: A dying filmmaker attempts a final project in South Korean drama

Dir/scr: Lee Jea-han. South Korea. 2025. 95mins

What do you do when you’re recognized with terminal most cancers and have roughly a month to stay? In case you are filmmaker Je-hyun (Moon In-hwan), you resolve to make one final movie and exit with a creative bang. That’s the jumping-off level for writer-director Lee Jea-han’s third function By One other Identify, a multi-layered meta-drama making its bow in Busan Competitors.

A muddled script and sluggish pacing

Lee is a former apprentice of and assistant director for Hong Sang-soo (on No one’s Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi) and has adopted in Hong’s footsteps by shortly establishing a thematic identification for himself in his work. In his earlier movies Sophie’s World (2021) and The Face of Hwanhee (2024), Lee explored ideas of constructed realities and the world as a fiction. Now these themes are on the coronary heart of By One other Identify, which can discover life on the competition circuit within the quick time period however, with a muddled script and sluggish pacing, is unlikely to achieve a lot additional traction.

Movies about filmmaking have an extended historical past, taking within the likes of the classical Singin’ In The Rain, the avant-garde 8½ and the gonzo One Lower Of The Lifeless, and the factor they have a tendency to have in widespread is an obsessive filmmaker on the centre of the motion. That holds true for By One other Identify, though Lee’s shattered script neuters any level about resignation, remorse and legacy he might have been aiming for.

Recognized with terminal lung most cancers, 30-something movie director Je-hyun has made peace together with his destiny. What he has not reconciled is his need to make one final movie. To that finish – and opposite to the needs of his spouse Su-jin (Jung Hoe-ryn, The Land Of Morning Calm) that he take it simple, eat proper and no less than attempt to lengthen his life – he secretly meets up together with his buddy and producer Ji-young (Hwang Mi-young, Netflix’s Hen Nugget) to get the ball rolling on manufacturing of a script he has simply completed. After discovering actors to play the roles of Je-hyun and his spouse, the group get began with desk reads in Je-hyun’s snug dwelling. However when Su-jin will get dwelling from work early someday and discovers them, they get into an argument – Je-hyun has a match, coughs up the cancerous tumour and is miraculously healed.

Nonetheless, it’s quickly revealed that this all transpired in Su-jin’s creativeness; it’s her impression of what her husband’s closing script would appear to be as she reads it for the primary time three years after his demise. On the spot, she decides she goes to see her husband’s closing want realized and make the film. As soon as once more, Ji-young is roped into producing, this time with troubled actor Jong-hoon (additionally Moon) taking part in Je-hyun – unsurprising contemplating he’s a useless ringer for the person. Evidently, the method compels Su-jin to make some uncomfortable admissions about her concepts of grieving, and when sufficient is sufficient.

Regardless of being shot in icy blues and virtually freed from a single close-up with a purpose to maintain us at a distance, By One other Identify muddies the waters by by no means selecting who the fixated filmmaker is. Might it’s each Je-hyun and Su-jin? Equally, Jong-hoon’s sequence resemblance is commented on however by no means actually impacts Su-jin, and the literal lingering spectre of Je-hyun solely raises but extra questions on what the movie is about. All through, Lee has a agency deal with on learn how to visualise the fabric – it simply appears as if he hasn’t found out precisely what materials that’s.