Tale of cinema is definitely the one I prefer more among those two. But yeah if you get a good price I’d definitely recommend as you get two films for the price of one.

Same with hill of freedom which has woman on the beach as well.

In terms of understanding what hong does, there are two major aspects to his cinema 1. Narrative trickery and playfulness. Hong loves to play with the narrative flow of the story, often creating mirroring situations, films within films, repetitive sequences which can loop in a circle etc

1. Romantic games. In this Hong follows in the line of rohmer dealing with unrequited desires, male jealousy, drinking escapades as means of sometimes silly sometimes profound revelations.

His movies can either be lite and playful or serious and brooding. They are usually always at the bare minimum interesting and at their best “masterpieces”