It looks as though we’re doomed to see at least one really boring movie each day of the film festival this year, and yesterday it was The Day He Arrives. It wasn’t as bad as Keyhole, thank goodness – that’s a bar set so low that it’s going to take a limbo master of a movie director to get under it.

Sungjoon, the central character in The Day He Arrives, is an out-of-work movie director, wandering like a hobo through the streets of Seoul in an anorak while chain-smoking from a bottomless pack of cigarettes. “I guess I’ll just wander around for a while,” he says in a voice-over, “doo-dee-doo-doo-doo. Oh, hey, I think I’ll get something to eat. Doo-dee-doo-doo-doo.” He meets three film students in a bar, they all get drunk, he gets really drunk and yells at them and runs away. He ends up at his old girlfriend’s apartment. She’s really mad at him because he barged in drunk. He cries in her lap. They fuck. “You’re such a beautiful person,” he tells her. “I love you. I want you to be happy. Here’s some cigarettes.” He leaves. She sends text messages to his phone. He never answers.

“I guess I’ll just wander around for a while,” he says in a voice-over, “doo-dee-doo-doo-doo. Oh, hey, I think I’ll call my friend.” His friend takes him to a bar. “Hey, the bartender looks like my old girlfriend!” He woos the bartender. In whatever universe this is, wooing her means abruptly kissing her in the street, apropos of nothing. Just as abruptly and for absolutely no fathomable reason, she falls in love with him. They fuck. “You’re such a beautiful person,” he tells her. “I love you. I want you to be happy.” He doesn’t give her any cigarettes, the chintzy bastard.

What I took away from the film was that emo film directors smoke a lot, can mooch all the liquor they can get down their necks off their best friends, and are inexplicably adept at taking sexual advantage of lonely women. Also, film critics love movies about them, especially when the movies are shot in black-and-white.