Ha Jung-woo's risky bet on sex and broken hearts
"The People Upstairs" is the kind of movie you'll know within five minutes whether you're staying on board or jumping ship. Ha Jung-woo's fourth and latest directorial effort — a chamber piece set entirely within a single apartment over a dinner party — is an extravaganza of rapid-fire banter, sexual innuendos and escalating absurdity, even as nothing remotely explicit appears on screen across its two-hour runtime.
The setup couldn't be simpler. Two married couples sit at a table: on one side, the frigid pair from downstairs, played by Gong Hyo-jin and Kim Dong-wook, and on the other, their uninhibited upstairs neighbors, played by Ha and Lee Hanee, who've been keeping the building awake with their enthusiastic nightly escapades. What unfolds is essentially a stage-play provocation dressed as comedy, and what you see in the first few minutes is more or less what you get for the duration.
In Korean cinema, an outright sex comedy remains a genuine anomaly. Films of this ilk are scarce here, partly because an X-rating brings marketing restrictions and screen shortages that make commercial viability a long shot. Perhaps the last one to break through was 2018's "Intimate Strangers," a similarly dialogue-driven chamber piece about extramarital secrets revealed over dinner, which surprised everyone with 5.29 million admissions. "The People Upstairs" ventures further — partner swapping, orgies, the whole nine yards — making the box office climb that much steeper.
"My mind's blank, honestly," Ha says Tuesday when asked how he feels awaiting the film's opening. He's seated at a Samcheong-dong cafe, speaking to a room of reporters with the practiced ease of someone who's done this routine many times. "You guys must be sick of seeing me — three times in one year."
For all his nonchalance, the stakes are high for the 47-year-old actor-director. "The People Upstairs" marks his third screen appearance and second directorial outing in 2025, following April's "Lobby," a corporate satire about a high-stakes golf meeting gone awry. Since launching his directing career in 2013, Ha has carved out a niche in talk-heavy comedies where the wisecracks and verbal sparring do the heavy lifting.
Audiences know what to expect from him by now. The results, however, have been mixed at best: "Lobby," for one, fizzled at 260,000 admissions.
Ha is genuinely funny in person. You can tell from the way he parries questions, slipping between dry wit and suave poise without skipping a beat. There's a certain slickness to his delivery that mirrors his on-screen characters — or perhaps the characters mirror him. When a reporter notes that his cast members are all married while he remains single, he shoots back: "Pros and cons either way, right?"
The film is an adaptation of Cesc Gay's 2020 Spanish comedy "Sentimental," and Ha was initially approached only to direct. When the production company suggested he play the husband opposite Gong Hyo-jin — the role that went to Kim Dong-wook — he declined.
"That would've been boring," he says. "I told them if I absolutely had to be in it, I should play the guy from upstairs, and Dong-wook should take the lead downstairs." His character, a high school classical Chinese teacher who moonlights as a committed proselytizer for group sex, is designed to offer comic potential through sheer incongruity.
For a film where talk is literally everything, Ha went to unusual lengths to sharpen the dialogue. He auditioned actors specifically to serve as reading stand-ins — four performers matched to the main cast's vocal qualities — and held daily sessions for weeks before shooting began.
"We'd meet at 8 a.m., five days a week, just reading through the script," he says. "You have to actually hear it out loud. Words land differently when they're spoken." He also recruited comedians Eom Ji-yoon, Kwak Beom and Lee Chang-ho to punch up the material. "Comedians are geniuses at this stuff. They've spent their whole lives crafting one-liners. I can't touch that."
That attention to detail carried over into the staging. Three days before shooting began, Ha brought his reading actors onto the completed set and ran through every scene, filming the entire rehearsal. The camera rarely cheats in the finished film — no impossible angles, no cuts that breach the confines of the space.
"If the camera floats off to some unrealistic position, it starts feeling like theater," he says. "I wanted it to feel like you're watching real people in a real home."
When it came to the film's steamier content, Ha drew a hard line. Executives suggested toning down the explicit dialogue to secure a 15+ rating instead of the restrictive 19+ classification. He refused. "If you neuter this film, you kill it," he says. "The whole point is watching how Gong Hyo-jin and Kim Dong-wook react to these outrageous things being said. You need that jolt for the comedy to land."
He's aware this sounds like commercial sabotage, but he's unbothered. "I didn't pick this project to chase ticket sales," he says. "If your whole goal as a director is box office numbers, what's the point of directing at all?" He brings up a Martin Scorsese documentary recently watched. "Even works like 'Goodfellas,' 'Casino,' Scorsese had no idea if they'd work. At first, people walked out of screenings."
Despite all the provocative packaging, Ha insists the film's real draw lies elsewhere. Beneath the sex talk and outlandish propositions is a story about a marriage gone cold and the strange catalyst that jolts it back to life, a meditation on how connection fades when people lose sight of each other.
"When I watched the original, I was genuinely moved," he says. "These two people who've drifted apart, who communicate through text messages from separate rooms — and somehow this ridiculous dinner party makes them see each other again. ... That feeling we've lost, that we forgot was even precious. That's what I wanted to capture here."
True to this conviction, the film's final act pivots toward sincerity, as the estranged couple finally confronts what's gone unsaid between them. It's a tonal shift that Ha considers his hidden weapon, the quiet center he hopes will resonate beyond the laughs.
"Everyone assumes this is just another sex comedy," he says. "But it's really about rediscovering something you forgot you'd lost. That unexpected moment when everything clicks back into place."
By any measure, Ha's got little left to prove at this point in his career — either as one of Korean cinema's most bankable leading men, or as an accomplished painter with a serious collector following. Directing seems like his only unfinished business. It is a voluntary struggle nobody's forcing on him, but one he won't let go of.
Looking back on his earlier efforts, Ha admits he's been his own worst enemy. "In my previous films, I wanted to say too much, show too much. Too many characters, too many ideas. I was trying too hard," he says. "This time, I let go of some of that. I decided I should trust the actors more and strip things down."
Whether audiences will follow him there remains uncertain. But for now, Ha seems content to leave it to chance. "Life runs on accidents," he says, turning philosophical. "A failing marriage gets saved by some bizarre dinner party? That's just how things work. You can't plan for the moments that actually change you."
"I just hope people walk out thinking it was fun. That's enough."
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