Blokes and their booze. By ALEXANDER BISLEY.

TOO MUCH low-budget cinema involves plodding narcissists boorishly indulging themselves. The frequently very funny Daytime Drinking however is a very superior, convivial flick. I raise my glass to it. Straight off we meet four amigos imbibing round a Seoul table heartily laden with booze. Hyuk-jin is upset about romantic matters. His garrulous friends jest about him employing Myspace, then enthuse about a blokes’ trip to bucolic Jeongseon. Hyuk-jin ain’t keen, making all sorts of excuses. “I need to feed my dog.” “How old is your dog?” “Three.” “Your dog can look after itself, even feed itself dessert.” Eventually persuaded, likeable Hyuk-jin turns up in Jeongseon only to finds out the trio have blacked out after a heavy session, and won’t be able to make it for a couple of days. He checks in at a guesthouse run by a remarkably impolite man. “Stop hanging around,” he’s welcomed. Daytime Drinking explores the rowdy comedy of rude behaviour a la Host and Guest.

More drinking and idling, then Hyuk-jin heads to the beach at Gengneung, via a memorable altercation with an annoying, unbalanced woman on the bus. He befriends a hipster couple on the beach and an enjoyably frenzied night ensues. In one of the Daytime Drinking scenes that had me laughing raucously, Hyuk-jin awakes on a snowy hilltop. His companions have robbed him off all his possessions, including his pants, leaving him in short undershorts. It takes three or four hours of comic attempts at hitchhiking before he gets a ride; and Hyuk-jin’s comic tribulations are not over yet. Sharply written, acted with heart, and imaginatively and wittily composed, Daytime Drinking is funnier (and much more admirable) than lazy, dishonest Bruno. I look forward to more from resourceful director Noh Young-seok.

Korean cinema is most known for the olde ultra-violence. The Chaser is an above-average serial killer movie, with a cop-turned-pimp investigating his girls’ disappearances. But it’s far from a movie like Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy: lacking the virtuosity, emotional resonance, audacity and visceral dynamism that elevates the masochism.