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Site Update: Review of Pruning the Grapevine (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:22:46 +0900

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim

Pruning the Grapevine

Soo-hyun (Seo Jang-won, The Unforgiven), a Catholic seminary student, is going through a personal crisis. About to take the vow of life-long celibacy, he has a bad break-up with his girlfriend Soo-ah (Lee Min-jung, Someone Special). He confesses to the dean that he wishes to leave the seminary, but the latter instead assigns him to a monastery in a remote countryside, supervised by the terse but warm-hearted Father Moon (Ki Joo-bong). He adjusts well to the austere monastic life, until one day he runs into Helena, a young nun who is a dead ringer for Su-ah (Lee Min-jung again).

Pruning the Grapevine is the third film directed by the Russia-educated Min Boung-hun. His previous feature films, Flight of the Bee (1999) and Let's Not Cry (2002), were set in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, respectively, and were made with a local cast. This is the first time Min has directed a Korean cast with a screenplay written in Korean language (authored by the director and Yoo Dong-shik).

Grapevine is an overwhelmingly sincere film, well-mannered and respectful, that takes its subject, the quest for genuine faith in God, absolutely seriously. It rivals Secret Sunshine in its thorough immersion in the Christian Weltanschauung, so much so that non-Korean viewers who tend to think of, say, Spring, Summer, festooned with the signs of chicly Orientalist, mock-Buddhist "spirituality," as representative of Korean cinema may well ask in befuddlement, "What is Korean about this movie?" The truth of the matter is that Korean cinema has a long tradition of Christian-themed films, and Grapevine compares favorably with the established canons in this lineage, such as Yu Hyun-mok's Son of Man (1980) and Kim Hyun-myung's Agatha (1984). I might add, too, that Catholicism has been around in Korea for 230 years and has produced 103 officially canonized saints: if Catholicism is not "Korean" then the pork-potato stew accompanied by shots of soju is sure as heck not Korean either. (Look up since when Koreans started eating potatoes)

Viewers who cannot quite accept the theological premise of the film might still be drawn in by Min's astute and patient directorial guidance that keeps the narrative humming, albeit on a low octave. He eschews overt dramatic gestures or button-pushing tactics but all the same extracts superbly nuanced performances out of not only the young leads but also veteran Ki Joo-bong, who invests Father Moon with his customary endearing qualities as an archetypical Korean patriarch as well as a measure of contemplative wisdom. Obviously an unassuming low-budget production, Grapevine still features strikingly beautiful cinematography by a team of young camera-men (Kim Jeong-won, Kim Jae-gwang, Lee Byung-hoon and others), particularly impressive in its use of sunlight.

Without giving anything away, I can report that the mystery of Soo-ah's Doppelgänger is resolved through the display of a kind of karmic symmetry, too strange to be a coincidence, too natural to be a deliberate act. (It is allegedly inspired by a similar true incident that took place in Armenia and was witnessed first-hand by the director) Has Soo-hyun just witnessed a miracle? Maybe. Whatever his interpretation of this experience may be, the film suggests, he is now happy with the knowledge that his faith has been tested and proven to be real.

Pruning the Grapevine, completely indifferent to the thematic obsessions and consumer fads that dominate mainstream Korean cinema today, is a richly rewarding film to open-minded viewers, dramatically powerful and authentically spiritual. I can hardly wait for Min Byung-hoon's next project, supposedly a taboo-breaking love story, and only hope that we get to see it before 2011. (Kyu Hyun Kim)

Site Update: Review of Camellia Project (2005)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:21:14 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

Camellia Project

Obligations are making it difficult for me to spare two to three hours to watch a movie in one sitting. Until I can relinquish some of those responsibilities, I'm beginning to appreciate omnibus films more and more. Although arguments will be made that shorts within an omnibus film are intended to be watched in one complete sitting, I'm treating them more in the way the great short story author Alice Munro once said her collections should be read, watching each short in a single sitting, gradually pacing my way through the collection.

Such has brought me to the omnibus film The Camellia Project, three shorts about the lives of contemporary Gay South Korean couples. Each short is filmed on Bogil Island, as if standing offshore as a metaphor of the restrictions placed on Queer folk that they must separate from the main(stream)land to live their lives more freely. It's sad for those whose prejudices turn them off to such topics, because this omnibus is definitely worth a viewing in one, two or three installments.

Director Choi Jin-seong's Freak Show begins the series. In it we meet Choon-ha (Hwang Choon-ha) as he accidentally locates his former lover while masturbating to a mixed martial arts match. Turns out his ex, Wang-geun (Kim Wang-geun) is now a professional fighter. Wang-geun, now married with a young daughter, takes his daughter on a holiday to reunite with Choon-ha. When his wife calls him on the phone concerned that he hadn't mentioned meeting up with a 'friend', she asks if this friend is female or male. When she hears he is male, it's not clear whether this comforts her. The rest of the short brings clarity to us on this point. (To avoid the censorship regarding graphic sex, Choi utilizes animation to demonstrate how this couple's church-bound relationship initially dissolved.) I'm less impressed with Freak Show as I am the two shorts that follow it, perhaps because it tries to do too much with the animation disruptions, the stage-like productions, and the drag show reductions. But that's not to say it's a horrible short, just not as good as the other two in tow.

The best of the bunch is director So Joon-moon's Drifting Island, a wonderful title to underscore how we are watching this couple drift apart to the sounds of waves that pace our breaths along with the beats of the film. It's a fairly simple plot which leaves me with very little to say in this paragraph devoted to it. But the closing moments of this relationship when these two men (played by Jeong Seung-gil and Lee Eung-jae) reach their climax as a couple is presented perfectly with tender restraint. If you are one to have problems with what is called identity-politics', this is the queer film for you. Its theme of love lost and let go shows the universal found in the particular.

Director Leesong Hee-il (of future No Regret fame) finishes this triptych with La Triavata, a short with a cryptic opening that gives way to an equally cryptic ending. A woman is in search of a man, but we are not sure exactly why. To tell you the relationship between the female seeker and male sought would be to ruin much of the power of the film, but let me say that it's not the relationship you think. (But I can't resist telling you that one of the men featured in this film is played by none other than Kim Tae-yong, the co-director of Memento Mori and director of Family Ties.) Leesong's choice not to resolve the film at the end is equally powerful because the smirk on her face reveals the possibility of condemnable reactions that daily South Korean society, as well as my own, sadly condones. (Interestingly, director Leesong will later cast two actors in his debut feature from this omnibus, but from the two shorts he did not direct, actors Hwang Choon-ha and Jeong Seung-gil, respectively.)

And if we are to eventually suppress and deactivate the condemnable reactions our societies encourage towards adults loving each other outside the demands of unhealthy gender paradigms, we need more films like The Camellia Project. (Adam Hartzell)

Site Update: Review of The Evil Twin (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:42:44 +0900

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim

The Evil Twin

The film is set in the Joseon Dynasty period. So-yeon (Park Shin-hye, Love Phobia), a teenage daughter of a moderately powerful yangban family, awakens from a ten-year coma, following a drowning accident that took the life of her twin sister Hyo-jin. So-yeon's mother (veteran TV actress Yang Geum-seok) is ecstatic, and aggressively orchestrates a marriage with Hyun-shik (Jae Hyuk, 3-Iron), the twin's childhood friend and So-yeon's betrothed. The village community, however, is soon plagued by mysterious deaths: So-yeon also seems to suffer from strange memory lapses and mismatched recollections of the drowning. Her childhood rival Seon-young (Han Yeo-woon) is convinced that So-yeon not only killed her own sister but is behind the recent murders as well. It is up to Hyun-shik to uncover the shocking truth about the twins' relationship...

Hoo boy, did I just write "shocking truth?" Let me speculate: I venture to guess that at one point The Evil Twin was supposed to be a straightforward retelling of a traditional ghost story, usually a young virgin wronged by the Confucian family system and blamed for sins she did not commit. Alas, the only carryover from that type of classic Korean ghost story is the long-haired, white-clad visage of the vengeful spirit. Nearly everything else has been updated disastrously. The film borrows its Korean title from the extremely popular TV program, Jeonseor-eui Gohyang ("The Heartland of Myths"), virtually the only anthology horror show in '70s and '80s Korea (and recently revived with better special effects but not necessarily better teleplays), but do not expect any purposefully retro look or gently satiric take on old things-that-go-bump-in-the-night cliches.

Instead, Evil Twin is yet another lugubrious, preachy genre film that takes itself way too seriously and loses sight of its primary objective: to scare and entertain its viewers. Director-writer Kim Ji-hwan seems to think that his film has some serious moral lessons about motherly love and sibling jealousy to impart. Sorry, but no dice. The dialogue is atrocious, sub-TV drama-level stuff, the pace is as slow as a cart pulled by a grazing mule, and the occasional outbreak of para-MTV editing hustle-bustle miserably fails to camouflage the fact that the story sucks like a leech lying in a flooded rice paddy. There is zero creativity in the way the ghost is presented, too: despite her traditional Korean imprimatur, she is just another PSC (Pointless Sadako Clone), complete with the awkward, in-need-of-a-chiropractor choreography.

The young actors and TV veterans work rather well together (one of the film's few pleasures is to spot recognizable veteran faces among the cast, such as Yang and Hong Seong-min, who has a brief cameo as So-yeon's physician) but they are mostly defeated by catatonia-inducing dialogue and characterization. And what's with the verbal catfight between So-yeon and Seon-young? They talk like 8th-graders enrolled in a chi-chi South-of-River junior high arguing over who's got the cooler-looking cell phone. Park and Han are reasonably cute, and the latter has at least a chance to run around fetchingly dressed as a young man: on the other hand, Han also has to suffer the humiliation of having to act enraged while covered with open sores and black sesame seeds Eeew, don't even ask what I am talking about. To cap it all off, the film rips off the finale of the dorky Macaulay Culkin (remember him?) vehicle The Good Son (1993) and splashes it all over the audience as if it were a big, original plot twist.

Given such enervating examples as Evil Twin, even a die-hard horror film fan like me must take the news that the 2008 summer season will be devoid of the usual glut of K-horror as a positive development. This movie is a particularly galling experience, since a simple, no-bullcrap retelling of a Tale of Two Sisters-like classic ghost story would have been many times superior to it. Why give a film a Korean title like Heartland of Myths, if you are not going to live up to the expectations it brings? (Kyu Hyun Kim)

Darcy's Blog: May, the month of classic films

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:21:51 +0900

2008.05.11: May, the month of classic films The most exciting Korean films scheduled to appear in theaters this May all happen to be made decades ago. This is because the Korean Film Archive (KOFA) is holding a festival to commemorate the official opening of their new cinematheque and film museum. It is also because the lineup of new contemporary films this month looks like the crumbs left at the bottom of the cookie jar. Not to denigrate those few low-budget films that have secured a release -- I haven't seen them yet, and they may turn out to be OK -- but as a measure of the current state of the Korean film industry, it's pretty depressing. (June and July, at least, should be better)

But the classic movies are indeed big news. The festival's opening film, which screened on Friday and again on Saturday, was the recently re-discovered 1934 silent feature Turning Point of the Youngsters. An original nitrate negative of the film was discovered in Korea last year by the son of a former theater owner. It was then handed over to the Archive, which arranged for restoration work to be done in Japan. Eight of the film's nine reels were salvaged, making for a 73-minute feature.

Most notably, Turning Point of the Youngsters (it seems like a more natural translation would be Crossroads of Youth) is now the oldest Korean film in possession, and the first film from Korea's silent era which is available for viewing. (There is another Korean silent film, The Prosecutor and the Woman Teacher, from 1948, but this is an odd exception because it was only shot in silent format because some older film stock happened to be available. At that point, it had been over a decade since Korea had switched over exclusively to sound)

As in Japan, Korean silent films feature no intertitles but are instead screened to the commentary of a live narrator (called a "byeonsa" in Korean, or "benshi" in Japanese). To fully revive the experience, KOFA staged a show with live music, onstage singing, and the narration of a byeonsa dressed up in 1930s-style clothing and speaking in a period dialect. The byeonsa was film and theater actor Jo Hee-bong (Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater), the narration was written by Oh Ryu-mi, and overall direction of the screening/performance was done by Family Ties director Kim Tae-yong.

It was quite an impressive experience, actually. I once read a fascinating article about how, in the West, pianists who accompanied the screening of silent features in the 1910s and 1920s could drastically affect the viewing experience based on the tone of their music -- and would sometimes, if they sensed the crowd to be bored, even mock the film with sarcastic music. (For anyone who might want to track the article down, it's by Tim Anderson, in the fall 1997 volume of Cinema Journal) For a byeonsa, who not only describes what happens onscreen but throws in all manner of comments, the effect is vastly multiplied. A KOFA employee told me that at first, when planning this screening, they intended to do it "straight", and maintain a respectful, serious attitude towards the film. But later -- and I feel this was absolutely the right decision -- they decided to let the byeonsa throw himself into the melodramatic narrative and insert comedy when appropriate. The end result was very involving and funny, and it never felt disrespectful.

The film itself, about a brother and sister who come from the country into Seoul and encounter modern life (and heartless playboys) for the first time, would never be mistaken for a masterpiece. It is directed by An Jong-hwa, who made 12 features between 1930 and 1960. It also features Shin Il-seon, who starred in the lost classic Arirang (1926). Its biggest charm for modern viewers is probably the way in which it presents upper-class 1930s Seoul as if to the eyes of a first-time viewer. Many viewers of that time period would probably never have seen a golf course, an elevator, or the interior of an upscale restaurant. And we too, of course, take a similar perspective watching it today.

There is only one more screening scheduled, this one without the performance/narration, on May 21 at 5:30pm (seeing it in this way will be infinitely drier and more confusing, I'm sure). But the Saturday screening I saw was completely sold out and the young audience went crazy over it, so I think that KOFA will have to plan to do this again sometime.

In the meantime, they have the rest of the festival to finish. And in addition to a selection of overlooked Korean classics, restored films from around the world, a screening of early-twentieth century footage of Seoul, and more, they have another surprise for the closing film: Korea's very first animated feature, Hong Gil-dong (1967). Tom Giammarco wrote a great introduction to the film in his Brief History of Korean Animation, Part II. It was believed to be lost, but recently the film was discovered in Japan and returned to Korea. There is one (unsubtitled) screening only, on May 25 at 7pm. If you plan to be there, buy your tickets early.

Site Update: Review of A College Woman's Confession (1958)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:46:54 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

A College Woman's Confession (1958)

Choi So-young is a university student majoring in law whose studies are supported by her grandmother. However after her grandmother dies, and with no parents or other relatives to support her, she is faced with the prospect of abandoning her career dreams and dropping out of school. With her rent overdue, So-young looks for a job, but finds that the only men willing to hire her are interested in favors that extend beyond the workplace.

Meanwhile So-young has a friend, the aspiring novelist Hee-sook, who has stumbled across a rather unusual diary written by a young woman who has since died. The diary reveals that a powerful politician named Choi Rim has a lost biological daughter, born to a woman he knew in the years before his marriage. But Assemblyman Choi has no knowledge of his daughter's identity or whereabouts.

Hee-sook, with a novelist's appreciation for dramatic plot twists, suggests something that So-young would never consider on her own: posing as the daughter of Assemblyman Choi in order to put herself through college. So-young rejects it out of hand, but as time passes and she becomes more desperate, it starts to look like a more attractive option.

A College Woman's Confession is Shin Sang-ok's big hit of the 1950s, and indeed the film that established his commercial career. Reportedly based on a French feature which in Korea was translated as Betrayal (I haven't been able to identify it), the film is notable for the star-making performance of Choi Eun-hee as So-young, and for its focus on the challenges faced by women in the post-war era. It's not hard to see why the film was so popular with female audiences of its time, given its dramatic strengths and the highly unusual portrait of a talented female lawyer who devotes herself to defending disenfranchised women, even as she herself is in danger of losing everything.

Aesthetically, Confession contains accomplished acting, an effective use of suspense (despite the slow manner in which it unfolds), and a keen feel for image and sound during an era when technical challenges dominated the filmmaking process. (Less effective is the film's musical soundtrack, with its sudden bursts of dramatic music that may seem comical to contemporary audiences) I found myself especially taken with the performance of Kim Seung-ho as Assemblyman Choi, whose measured, soft-spoken dialogue and deliberate manner overlay a passionate devotion to his newfound daughter.

There is also an interesting extended flashback that occurs in the latter part of the film, about a woman defended by So-young who has been accused of murder. The defendant is played by well-known actress Hwang Jeong-soon, who together with Choi won an acting award at the first edition of the short-lived Domestic Film Awards in 1959. (The photo that accompanies this review is of Choi receiving an acting award, since I have not been able to locate any image from the film itself.) We see in the defendant's story parallels to So-young's own experience, despite the vast divergence in their ultimate fates. The film's sudden return to the grim realities of poverty in the midst of So-young's professional advancement serves to place an asterisk next to her story and function as a reminder of what most people of that era were experiencing. (Darcy Paquet)

A College Woman's Confession ("Eoneu yeodaesaeng-ui gobaek"). Directed by Shin Sang-ok. Screenplay by Shin Sang-ok and Jo Nam-sa. Starring Choi Eun-hee (So-young), Kim Seung-ho (Assemblyman Choi), Yu Gye-seon (Choi's wife), Choi Hyun (Choi's assistant), Kim Sook-il (Hee-sook), Hwang Jeong-soon (defendant). Cinematography by Kang Beom-gu. Produced by Seoul Film Company. 120 min, b&w. Released on July 12, 1958.

Site Update: Review of Lump of Sugar (2006)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:45:41 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

Lump of Sugar

Esteemed producer Tcha Sung-jai, as Moon Seok writes in the 2007 Cannes Edition of Korean Film Observatory, "has aesthetically contributed to debuting the directors who now represent the Korean film industry such as Kim Sung-su, Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, Hur Jin-ho, and Jang Joon-hwan and accomplished the large capitalization of the Korean film industry." And although Lump of Sugar director Lee Hwan-kyung is not up to par yet with his predecessors, Tcha's participation further solidifies his importance to South Korean cinema in that with Lump of Sugar he helped secure financing for a vehicle in which a young actress as exemplary as Lim Soo-jeong can further hone her craft. And it is Lim who is very much responsible for my tempered appreciation of this little coming-of-age drama.

In Lump of Sugar, Lim plays Si-eun, a young girl who lives alone with her father on his farm along with his stable-hand, a friend from his obligatory military service. Si-eun's mother dies when Si-eun is very young. Visiting her mother's grave she collapses and is carried home by her mother's favorite horse, General. This brings the stable-hand to comment that General was sent to rescue Si-eun by her mother from beyond the grave. General will be shown caring for little Si-eun in more scenes, solidifying this emotional and cosmic connection. When General dies while birthing a foal to be named Thunder, Si-eun feels indebted to her new 'brother'. While all this character loyalty is being developed, we are also provided glimpses of Si-eun's interest in becoming a jockey. Her father, who still fears that Si-eun will fall off a horse to her death like her mother, attempts to stifle this pursuit by selling Thunder. Instead of encouraging Si-eun to pursue a college education through this passive-aggressive action, Si-eun instead is encouraged to ride away in pursuit of her dream.

I have yet to stumble across a survey by a scholar verifying (or contradicting) my impression regarding films centered on the trials of young women. But my recollections of such films leave me feeling that the majority of them demand a male love interest for the young lady lead. In this way, her actions are not her own but based on what is required for the male object of her affection to acknowledge her desire and validate her womanly existence. The saving grace is that some of these films have the young women realize they were mistaken in assessing what they desired. Still, the genre seems to require the male love interest.

This brings me to the other major reason I find Lump of Sugar film momentarily endearing - Si-eun's trials have nothing whatsoever to do with pursuing a boyfriend. It has everything to do with realizing her agency, specifically jockeying for her position within this male enclave while retaining her ethical tenets of fair play and mutual respect. Fellow jockey Cheol is misunderstood as a love interest by Si-eun's roommate, but Cheol is clearly a rival (therefore her equal) in the vein of any other male sports genre film. Yes, the set-ups of Si-eun and Thunder reuniting after a long absence present them looking longingly at each other as if torn straight out of a romantic comedy, so it can be argued that the genre demands of a male love interest have been displaced onto a horse. (And this is an area where many could make fun of the film, since these classic Hollywood "meet cutes" are overdone and regurgitated often.) But this love interest is that of the type of love felt between family members, including the family pet, not of the erotic kind. I may not relate to the feelings some have for their animal companions, but I don't doubt that love is felt between them, and felt intensely, especially amongst young people, who are the primary target of a film like Lump of Sugar. (The film almost broke even in its attempt to reach that audience.)

We know from genre conventions that Thunder will return and that certain sports genre tropes will intrude. Even nationalism, a common motif in sports genre films, rears its horse's rear end since much is made of the fact that Thunder's ability is doubted since he is a Korean-bred horse. The occasional cliched feel of these requisite moments, particularly the meet-cutes, keep this film from being a great film. But the fact that the genre-demanded male love interest is jettisoned and Si-eun's character exhibits several shining moments of nicely flowing, feminist agency the most powerful being her intrusion into the privileged male space of the locker room to confront a colleague whose (lack of) sporting ethics put another colleague in danger make this a film that expands the genre enough to placate both those who insist on genre demands and those who insist on something original. Although I can't say the film is a stellar piece of work, I resolve to let the film be what it is, a decent film within the young adult, coming-of-age genre. (Adam Hartzell)

Site Update: Review of The Happy Life (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:00:11 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

The Happy Life

The combination of director Lee Joon-ik and screenwriter Choi Seok-hwan has been golden, not only with their record-breaking smash hit King and the Clown but also with mid-sized hits like like Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (2003) and Radio Star (2006). Their films are sometimes clever, but never flashy or trend-chasing. More than anything else, it is storytelling skill that drives their works. They create believable, real-life characters and make us care about them.

The Happy Life is their latest release, a smaller-budget project made before taking on the Vietnam War-era Sunny (scheduled for release in summer 2008). The film's story first picks up at a funeral, where three middle aged friends sit down together and start to reminisce about the past. Twenty years earlier, the deceased had been the lead singer in a university rock band called "Active Volcano", and the other three men had played lead guitar, bass and drums. Currently, the three are plodding through life without much enthusiasm or sense of meaning. Then Ki-young, the guitarist, bursts out with a crazy idea: "Let's re-form the band!"

As a basis for a film, this setup seems neither particularly unique or commercially appealing, but Lee and Choi are able to turn this into an unusually fun movie, thanks in part to vivid characterization. Ki-young (played by Jung Ji-young from King and the Clown) has accepted early retirement and has grown used to life as an unemployed father. His wife Seon-mi (the supremely talented Kim Ho-jeong, Nabi) works as a teacher and so the family is able to scrape by. But she and their daughter Ju-hee (Ko Ah-sung, the little girl from The Host) pay him hardly any attention as they go about their daily lives.

Seong-wook (the bassist, played by Kim Yun-seok who has been catapulted to fame by The Chaser) has recently been laid off. With a smart son, and a wife eager to give him the best schooling and private lessons possible (which in Korea will cost a small fortune), he has taken to working several menial jobs at a delivery service and designated driver program. Meanwhile Hyuk-soo (the drummer, played by character actor Kim Sang-ho) runs a car dealership in Seoul in order to support his wife and two kids who live in Canada -- a not uncommon situation in contemporary Korea.

In truth, it's insane for any of these three to be actively entertaining the idea of starting a band. Urgent real-life problems beckon, and their families are unlikely to be very understanding. But crazy ideas sometimes gather momentum and lead us in unexpected directions.

The Happy Life manages to be both entertaining and uplifting without papering over any of the economic issues that ground the film in reality. Although the broad plot of the film remains fairly predictable, the meat of the story lies in the many smaller dramas and twists that take place along the way. Hyuk-soo the drummer in particular becomes a fascinating character as the story progresses, and sure enough he won a best supporting actor award at Korea's Blue Dragon awards ceremony for his engaging performance. But all of the extended cast is great, giving an even greater boost to this modest story that surpasses expectations. (Darcy Paquet)

Site Update: Review of Desert Dream (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:58:58 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

Desert Dream

As we creep towards the opening credits, Desert Dream fades to dusty yellow before it fades to black. If you are ever in East Asia in the spring/summer and notice the people wearing surgical masks, don't be worried about a returning SARS outbreak. Be worried about yellow dust. Yellow dust storms originate primarily from the deserts of Mongolia, northern China, and Kazakhstan thanks to an erosion of barren land similar to that of the Dust Bowl that occurred in the U.S. in the 1930's. These storms end up carrying pollutants in their wake to cities halfway around the world, exposing neighboring countries to lung-damaging particles, hence the surgical masks. In China, as Patrick Alleyn notes in his article "The Chinese Dust Bowl" in the October 2007 issue of the Canadian monthly The Walrus, besides government 'ecological refugee' relocation programs, efforts are being taken to renew the land to a fertile state to hold off further erosion, such as planting a Great Green Wall of China to protect the land from wind, or fining shepherds who allow their flocks to graze indiscriminately. But Zhang Lu's film is void of such collective political action in Mongolia. In Desert Dream (Mongolian title - Hyazgar), one man is the Johnny Appleseed of stories that make up the Mongolian section of The Steppes. That man is Hungai (Osor Bat-Ulzii).

When Hungai's daughter's illness demands his wife take her to the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Batar, he is left with just his saplings and the few familiar faces that pass through his little nook of The Steppes. But soon some new faces appear at his door, two North Korean refugees, pre-teen Chong-no (Shin Dong-ho) and his mother (Suh Jung). Slowly these two get to know each other and trust each other as they assist Hungai in his tree-planting, cow-milking, dung-gathering, and goat-birthing. Although the dialogue explicates some themes, the majority of the plot is supported by silent actions since only two of the three in this triad can verbally communicate with one another. (But such linguistic limitations do not stop Chong-no's mother from clearly informing Hungai to keep his grimy hands off her body.) Such persistent silence enhances the effect of the stories told in the folk songs sung in Desert Dream.

Each Zhang film I've seen depicts lost characters seeking something and someone to hold on to, only to be disappointed by eventual betrayal. Desert Dream follows a similar path as it spins us around as we seek an elusive holding place, which presents the viewer with a tiny fraction of the disorientation experienced by many of the refugees of the world. The film is slow-paced, taking time out to appreciate the vast expanse of space making this film perfect for the cinema, and leaving me disappointed that my only option for viewing it was my computer screen.

As my friend Brian Darr has noted over at his blog Hell on Frisco Bay, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is lately staying loyal to particular directors and I'm happy they found fidelity with director Zhang Lu, or otherwise who knows when I might have had a chance to check out Desert Dream after its screening in official competition at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, even if that chance is only on my computer via the privileges of a reviewer's copy. Zhang's decision to focus on the displaced, be it North Koreans in China (Grain In Ear) or in Mongolia, is a welcomed and refreshing presence on the world cinema stage. Much is made about the money lost in South Korean cinema in 2007, but not enough is made about the other losses, those films deserving of greater exposure that stay in the film festival ghetto. But in this case, the marginalization of Zhang's films in theaters parallels the lives of his characters. Perhaps the fact that Zhang is a third-generation Korean-Chinese explains why he empathizes so much with the status of his characters. Thankfully, as Tom Giammarco informs me, he has two more films set for release in South Korea. It appears Zhang will continue on with his work like that of the characters of Desert Dream. In spite of the obstacles, each continues to walk onward in the face of all the dust in the wind that seeks to impede their progress. Occasionally each finds oases of beauty along the way. (Adam Hartzell)

Site Update: Review of Going by the Book (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:44:31 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

Going by the Book

Do-man is a low-ranking traffic cop with an unusual personality. Soft-spoken and seemingly a bit shy, he is nonetheless unbending when it comes to rules and the law. His quiet stubbornness makes him the butt of other officers' jokes. Occasionally it also gets him into trouble, as when he pulls over his new boss, the newly instated police chief Lee Seung-woo, and issues him a ticket.

The police chief, played here by the dependable character actor Son Byeong-ho, is surprised and a bit annoyed at the unexpected fine. But he has other things to worry about at the moment. The town of Sampo is in a panic over a string of bank robberies, and as a means of reassuring them, he decides to carry out a highly realistic drill to demonstrate the police force's professionalism and resolve. Officers will be stationed throughout the city, and without warning, someone pretending to be a bank robber will stage a holdup, taking hostages if necessary. The chief announces the plan, and then later in secret, he tells Do-man that he is to act as the bank robber.

The chief may have been chuckling to himself at the irony of having a man so committed to obeying the law play the part of a criminal. But for Do-man, this is no laughing matter. Devoting himself to the task at hand with his usual fastidious attention to detail, he prepares to commit the perfect crime.

Filmmaker/playwright Jang Jin has carved out a niche all his own in the film industry these past several years, and although he participates on Going By the Book as a screenwriter and producer -- not a director -- his contribution is unmistakable. His comedy is both character-based and situational at the same time, or in this case, it is the clash between Do-man's endearingly subdued character and the outrageous situation that he finds himself in that gives the film its biggest laughs.

Director Ra Hee-chan, like Welcome to Dongmakgol director Park Kwang-hyun before him, worked as an assistant director under Jang before making his debut with one of his mentor's scripts. Ra displays less of a personal style than Park, and Korean critics have questioned his sense of comic pacing (sadly, the film's biggest weakness), but he still managed to turn the film into a solid commercial hit of 2.2 million admissions. Indeed, the film considerably outperformed Jang's own feature My Son, released earlier in the year (which is admittedly one of his lesser works).

Any review of this film would be incomplete without mentioning the performance of longtime Jang collaborator Jung Jae-young in the role of Do-man. Although he was best known earlier in his career for playing slightly unhinged, violent characters as in No Blood No Tears or Silmido, he has since proven himself in films like the wonderful Someone Special (2004) to have a much wider emotional range. Do-man is a man who does not express his emotions very clearly (if at all). Jung is able, with mumbled sentences and a deer-in-the-headlights stare, to make him appealing and memorable, and in that sense he is a major contributor to this film's success. (Darcy Paquet)

Darcy's Blog: A Summer Without Horror?

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:00:17 +0900

2008.04.09: A summer without horror? This week's issue of Cine21 asks a scary question: could it be that not a single Korean horror film is released this summer? Usually producers of horror films aim specifically for the summer season, given that a tradition of sorts has emerged over the last decade. As the weather heats up, viewers seem to look forward to something to scare their socks off. But this year they may have to do with imported horror, because production companies have apparently decided that the genre needs a rest.

No less than six were released between May and August last year (in order: The Evil Twin, which was actually produced in 2005, Black House, Cadaver (aka The Cut), Muoi, Epitaph, and Someone Behind You). However none of them really met box-office expectations. Black House, the highest grossing of the group, sold 1.4 million tickets, but given the high profile cast and its big marketing push CJ Entertainment was hoping for a bit more. The Evil Twin, Muoi and Someone Behind You qualify as major flops. At the same time, Asian horror doesn't sell as well on the international market as it used to.

Given the much-discussed crisis in the film industry, and the scarcity of investment these days, it seems that (probably without intending to) all the major distributors have ended up bypassing the tradition this year. There is actually one lower-profile project that went into production in February that the Cine21 article didn't mention. With a Korean title of Oetori ("Loner"?), it is directed by Park Jae-sik and stars Jeong Yu-seok, Chae Min-seo and Goh Eun-a (pictures of the cast here). But we'll have to wait and see if it actually secures a release in the summer.

Meanwhile, The Guard Post (which mixes genres, but is probably closest to horror) was released last week, and though it opened at #1, ticket sales were still pretty low. Other companies are supposedly developing horror films for the future, but they won't be ready for the summer season.

Site Update: Review of Hellcats (2008)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:54:15 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

Hellcats

Relationship drama Hellcats centers around three women who live together in an old neighborhood of Seoul. Ami (Kim Min-hee, below) is a 29-year old screenwriter who has been holed up in a motel trying to finish a screenplay, but like most people involved in the film industry, her career is not progressing smoothly. Frustrated with life as it is, she receives a further shock when her boyfriend Won-seok double-crosses her. Furious and disoriented, she ends up channeling her energies into two things that look likely to get her into further trouble: alcohol and a hot-looking accountant named Seung-won.

Meanwhile Ami is getting little sympathy from her older sister Young-mi (Lee Mi-sook of Untold Scandal fame), who rents out a room to her. A successful 41-year old interior designer working on a new theatrical production, Young-mi has an active love life, and has lately gotten entangled with the much younger Gyeong-su. However an unexpected surprise is awaiting her on her next visit to the doctor's office.

Young-mi also has a daughter in high school named Kang-ae (An So-hee from the phenom teen pop group Wondergirls). A bright, optimistic sort of kid, Kang-ae enjoys a strong friendship with Mi-ran who grew up in Brazil, but she worries about her boyfriend of three years Ho-jae. In short, Ho-jae seems more interested in computer games than in getting naughty with her. Kang-ae and Mi-ran draw up a plan to push the relationship along, but this leads in unexpected directions.

Director Kwon Chil-in stumbled upon a hit in 2003 with Singles, a film that relied on good casting and a somewhat more honest take on modern relationships to catch viewers' attention. Five years later, Hellcats (the Korean title is "Some Like It Hot", just like the Billy Wilder classic) sticks to much the same formula, and though it failed to draw as much interest at the box office, the film still has its charms. The story of Ami in particular is engaging, as we follow her through wild swings in her resolve and emotional state. Actress/model Kim Min-hee (Surprise Party, Asako in Ruby Shoes) was once thought of as a pretty face with no talent, but in recent years she has surprised the public with nuanced performances in several high-profile TV dramas. Here too, the emotional tone she strikes is just right -- she doesn't come across as weak or immature, but her confusion feels genuine. The fact that her character shines the brightest in a film that also stars the legendary Lee Mi-sook is quite an accomplishment.

Unfortunately the film's other two stories are less developed; Young-mi and Kang-ae are interesting enough characters, but we never really get inside their heads as we do with Ami. Perhaps there just wasn't time in two hours to simultaneously develop these three separate stories, or (more likely?) it's a screenplay problem. Still, the film projects a breezy energy that makes it stand out from the average Korean rom-com. Not prudish, if not particularly racy either, Hellcats is a tasty two-hour diversion. (Darcy Paquet)

New Book: Seoul Searching (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:56:22 +0900

SEOUL SEARCHING: CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY KOREAN CINEMA (2007) Edited by Frances Gateward. SUNY Press: paperback (ISBN: 978-0-7914-7226-2), 314 pp / hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-7914-7225-5), 336 pp.

From the back cover: "Seoul Searching is a collection of fourteen provocative essays about contemporary South Korean cinema, the most productive and dynamic cinema in Asia. Examining the three dominant genres that have led Korean film to international acclaim - melodramas, big-budget action blockbusters, and youth films - the contributors look at Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product, and engage cinema's role in the formation of Korean indentities.

Committed to approaching Korean cinema within its cultural contexts, the contributors analyze feature-length films and documentaries as well as industry structures and governmental policies in relation to transnational reception, marketing, modes of production, aesthetics, and other forms of popular culture. An interdisciplinary text, Seoul Searching provides an original contribution to film studies and expands the developing area of Korean studies"

Contents:
1. Korean Cinema after Liberation: Production, Industry, and Regulatory Trends (Seung Hyun Park)
2. Christmas in August and Korean Melodrama (Darcy Paquet)
3. Storming the Big Screen: The Shiri Syndrome (Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer)
4. Timeless, Bottomless, Bad Movies: Or, Consuming Youth in the New Korean Cinema (David Desser)
5. Scream and Scream Again: Korean Modernity as a House of Horrors in the Films of Kim Ki-young (Chris Berry)
6. Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: The Politics of Memory and Modernity in the Fractured Films of Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo (Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient)
7. Reflexivity and Identity Crisis in Park Chul-soo's Farewell, My Darling (Hyangsoon Yi)
8. Nowhere to Hide: The Tumultuous Materialism of Lee Myung-se (Anne Rutherford)
9. Closing the Circle: Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? (Linda C. Ehrlich)
10. Waiting to Exhale: The Colonial Experience and the Trouble with My Own Breathing (Frances Gateward)
11. Crossing the Border to the "Other" Side: Dynamics of Interaction between North and South Koreans in Spy Li Cheol-jin and Joint Security Area (Suk-Young Kim)
12. Race, Gender, and Postcolonial Identity in Kim Ki-duk's Address Unknown (Myung Ja Kim)
13. Transgressing Boundaries: From Sexual Abuse to Eating Disorders in 301/302 (Diane Carson)
14. Taking the Plunge: Representing Queer Desire in Contemporary South Korean Cinema (Robert L. Cagle)

SOURCES: Amazon (paperback), Amazon (hardcover), Amazon.co.uk (paperback).

Site Update: Review of The Wonder Years (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:55:18 +0900

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim

The Wonder Years

The Wonder Years (another misguided English titlethis movie's about as remindful of the popular-in-Korea, Fred-Savage-starring '80s TV series as Twyla Tharp is of Michael Flaherty in Lord of the Dance) is a debut feature from director Kim Hee-jung, an alumna of the Lodz Film School and winner of the Wide Angle Prize at PIFF for the short Once, Someday (2001). Thirteen-year-old Soo-ah (the original Korean title), played by Lee Se-young (the childhood Geum-young from Daejanggeum), is a shy, borderline-autistic girl living in a small Cholla Province town. Deeply unhappy, she believes that a popular singer Yoon Seor-yeong (Kim Yoon-ah, a real-life vocal artist) is her real mother, to the bafflement of her working Mom, Young-joo (Choo Sang-mi, A Smile, Turning Gate). When her junior high school life turns out to be more of the same, i.e. peer abuse and indifference, Soo-ah resolves to travel to Seoul and confront her real mother.

One thing Korean cinema has done rather well in the last fifteen years is its continued support for, and introduction of, female directors with strong personal visions, beginning with Lim Soon-rye (whose Forever the Moment is shaping out to be 2008's first big Korean hit), Jeong Jae-eun (The Aggressives) and Byun Young-joo (Flying Boys). Kim Hee-jung is the latest in this roster of talented Korean female directors. Her Wonder Years is a gentle, composed character study that will probably bore viewers expecting either a well-heeled, cliche-bound melodrama wherein copious amounts of tears are shed, or an adolescent phantasmagoria with surrealistic flights of fancy. The movie truly excels when director-writer Kim observes the seemingly mundane details of Soo-ah's life with a compassionate gaze, letting the girl's slouched, awkward walk or her disappointed expression at a broken VCR player -- rather than spurious narration or distracting mise en scene -- speak for the character's feelings.

It would surprise no one that Lee and Choo are two principal reasons for anyone to check out The Wonder Years. Lee Se-young's portrayal of Soo-ah is remarkable in its subtlety and restraint. It is to her (and director Kim's) credit that the latter's terse (but often amusing) responses to the efforts by the adults to "make conversation" with her never once strike us as "precocious." Choo Sang-mi, one of the most skilled and naturally talented actresses working in Korea today, is brilliant as usual, conveying, for instance, Young-joo's lifetime of remorse and pain, but also the spiritual courage mustered by her to overcome them, in the brief moment of hesitation regarding where to hang a mirror. Truth to be told, both actresses are so ridiculously beautiful that we at times have trouble seeing Soo-ah and Young-joo with the contemptuous eyes of other characters in the movie. Indeed, Lee's face positively glows whenever the camera focuses on it: she is like a Winona Ryder going on 18 trying to play Ugly Betty. When one of the characters grumbles, "Boy, not only is she ugly but," my only possible reaction is "You need an eye exam, kid."

The Wonder Years is not without serious weaknesses. The story arc is rather predictable and ends in a disappointingly conventional resolution regarding the identity of Soo-ah's real mom. More seriously, director Kim's interpretations of Soo-ah's imaginary universe are surprisingly lackadaisical. In particular, the musical interludes, featuring Kim Yoon-ah belting out torch songs amid confetti and amber floodlights, look rather cheap and poorly choreographed. (I wish director Kim had employed some other tactic, like, say, Persepolis-like minimalist animation) While not an exciting and powerful debut feature comparable to, say, This Charming Girl or Take Care of My Cat, The Wonder Years is a solid character study with its own sense of integrity, as well as an excellent vehicle for the young actress Lee Se-young to showcase her considerable talent. (Kyu Hyun Kim)

Site Update: Review of Happiness (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:11:52 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

Happiness

Looks like in the case of my experience with the films of Hur Jin-ho, the fourth time's a charm. Rather than rehash what has kept me from fully embracing Hur Jin-ho's films, I'll just refer you to my review of his third film, the Yonsama vehicle April Snow, where I summarize my ethical battles with his narratives. I am happy to say Happiness has appeared to have tossed that tarnishing trope aside and I can now relinquish the ethical axe that too many narratives force me to grind. Whether or not this excision was conscious on Hur's part, I thank him anyway, because now I can join hands with the joy and despair that is a walk in Hur's characters' shoes rather than part ways along irreconcilable political paths.

Young-su (Hwang Jeong-min) works in a nightclub. Exactly what he does is never clear, but he is obviously dissatisfied with his work and relationships. We witness him lie to a woman who appears to be his girlfriend with a story about going abroad. He gives the same story to his mother. (Bringing up another major change in a Hur film, this is his first main male character with a present mother. In this case, the son's the absent one.) Yet Young-su doesn't head abroad, but to a health community of some kind nestled somewhere in a South Korean village where those with terminal illnesses go in hopes to diet, stretch and laugh their illnesses away. Taking his nightclub work home with him, Young-su's drinking has resulted in his acquiring cirrhosis of the liver. (One of the nice subtle beats of humor is struck by Hur having one of Young-su's fellow stricken campers refer to Young-su not by his given name, but by his given illness, "Good Morning, Cirrhosis!")

It is at this recuperation center that Young-su meets and loves and . . . (well, you'll see) the lung-disease-stricken Eun-hee (Lim Soo-jung) in the go-away, come-here, rinse and repeat way that we have come to expect of Hur's characters. Although not at the expert levels of Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day, the romance is still patiently developed and you will find yourself resonating with the film's title and dissonating just as strongly as Hur's ironic, yet not, title reveals itself. Hur's films are refreshing in how he executes the relationships between his two characters. As film critic Kim Ji-mi puts it in Korean Film Observatory magazine (No. 23), Hur "shows the outstanding talent of being able to grasp the sensitive moments of the beginning and ending of a love between a man and a woman" (p. 22). Think of what you hate about the overly melodramatic and reflect on what it would be like to see a director get ever so closed to the too cute but to turn away just at its palatable peak and that's Hur. Think of the histrionics you don't like about Korean TV serials and imagine a director who holds the sorrow tenderly enough to make the cries cleansing rather than cringing and you have the baby bear porridge of Hur's emotional competency.

Particularly lovely here are Young-su's tears and the comforting words (at least in translation) of Eun-hee. She lets him know that she didn't show her hurt before because nobody cared about her. She promises to show her hurt now and she expects him to care. In this wonderful mix of dialogue and soft action, Eun-hee says this not as she breaks down but just as Young-su does. She gives him what he's asking for by asking for what he wants to give her. (Eun-hee's is a strong voice in Hur's oeuvre, speaking confidently and maintaining self-respect despite the brief lapses of self-pity.) And his tears do the same for her. Both Young-su and Eun-hee are guarded individuals who eventually let their mutual armor down in order to receive each other completely. This means they will get hurt, but we can only hurt when we lose something that matters to us. I'd rather hurt than never care about something so much that pain never comes into the picture. It is in this way that Hur's ironic titles always circle back again to erase the irony we placed upon them. Happiness is what a Hur film can be when realized in all its ethical splendor. (Adam Hartzell)

Site Update: Review of The Guard Post (2008)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:47:23 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

The Guard Post

South Korea's meandering border with the North is one of the world's most surreal places, a heavily armed space still trapped in the Cold War. Park Chan-wook's JSA depicted the tension and close proximity of Southern and Northern soldiers at Panmunjeom, a former truce village that is now divided cleanly in half. But elsewhere along the DMZ, the most prominent structures are guard posts (GP for short): large, heavily armored self-contained forts that are strung along the border like pearls on a necklace. North Korea also maintains its own guard posts, which form pairs with those on the South.

The atmosphere in the DMZ (the term "de-militarized zone" is a bit of a joke) is tense. The military sends its strongest soldiers to this area, and imposes the harshest degree of discipline on them. Shots are occasionally exchanged across the border. Suicides or mysterious deaths have been known to occur among the men stationed there, and there was a recent case of a solider in a guard post who became mentally unhinged and slaughtered many of his fellow recruits.

What better place to set a supernatural gore fest? GP506 is a guard post that has fallen strangely silent (each GP is required to send a signal to headquarters every half hour; if the signal is not received, troops are sent in). A neighboring contingent of soldiers enters the post and finds blood on the walls and grossly dismembered bodies strewn in every direction. A military inspector arrives to investigate, and at first the deaths seem to be the result of some inner conflict within the group. The one surviving soldier is severely traumatized and seems unwilling to talk. Eventually, however, more disturbing clues emerge.

Kong Su-chang received both critical praise and commercial success with his debut R-Point (2004), about a company of Korean soldiers serving in Vietnam who are sent to a remote location to investigate a vanished squadron. The Guard Post would appear at first glance to be a virtual redux, with only the setting changed, but it's surprising how different the two films feel. R-Point was a slow-moving, chilling mystery with a slightly arty feel to it. The Guard Post is a roller coaster that wears its genre credentials more prominently on its sleeve, and despite its setting, offers a less developed political subtext. Unfortunately R-Point's greatest strengths -- its pitch-perfect ensemble acting and narrative coherence -- are reproduced far less successfully in the latter film.

The making of The Guard Post turned out to be more of an adventure than the filmmakers hoped. Midway through production, a spreading sense of crisis in the Korean film industry, together with unrelated trouble at the film's production company, caused the film's main investors to back out and shooting to ground to a halt. It appeared for some time that the film would never be finished, but eventually distributor Showbox stepped in and re-started the project.

Viewers beware: The Guard Post is gory! Brains, rotting flesh, self-mutilation -- this movie goes the extra mile (the poor woman sitting next to me at the press screening seemed to only barely make it through the film). Whereas R-Point had sort of a crossover appeal for people who don't like horror films, The Guard Post seems intended more explicitly for fans of the genre.

At two hours in length, the film is not short, and unfortunately the middle section is somewhat flaccid and confusing (some viewers may be annoyed by the constant jumping back and forth between past and present). I also found it frustrating that for all the care taken to build a highly authentic guard post set, the film never takes the time to properly "introduce" it to the viewer. JSA, by contrast, was much better at finding ways to orient and inform the viewer about Panmunjeom. However as its mysteries are sorted out, The Guard Post does finally find its rhythm in the last 30 minutes, and from then on out it's an engaging enough genre splatterfest. (Darcy Paquet)

Darcy's Blog: Jeonju, and a note to readers

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:16:13 +0900

2008.04.02: Jeonju, and a note to readers First let me start this blog post with some personal news, since it is likely to affect the site. My work life is going to be changing this spring: first of all, I have decided to stop writing for Variety. I enjoyed the time I spent as the magazine's Korea correspondent, but I've been feeling overwhelmed recently, and just need to simplify my life a bit. I also need to spend less time on the computer, because the arm pain (RSI) I have is sometimes quite severe. So I'm hoping to concentrate most of my film writing on this website, and maybe get back to doing some teaching to replace the lost income. (Or, with luck, I may finally get a proper sponsor for the site).

I'm also in the process of writing a book. It won't be officially announced until the manuscript is in, but it's an entry into the Short Cuts series published by Wallflower Press in the U.K. It will examine the revival and boom of Korean cinema from the 1980s until the present, while also giving a basic overview of the political and social changes that transformed Korea in that time period. My deadline for the initial draft is the end of June, so perhaps sometime next year we can see it in print.

Those are my two goals this spring: finish the book, and put the mojo back into this website. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I thought I would comment a bit on this year's Jeonju International Film Festival, scheduled for May 1-9. The full program was revealed yesterday at press conferences in Jeonju and Seoul. The opening film is from Japan, Manda Kunitoshi's The Kiss ("Seppun"), and the closing film will be the fourth installment of If You Were Me, the omnibus films sponsored by the Korean Human Rights Commission. Whereas If You Were Me 1, 2, and 3 were mostly focused on the issue of discrimination, this time around the focus will be on the challenges facing young people in today's Korea. The five directors chosen are Kim Tae-yong (Family Ties), Pang Eun-jin (Princess Aurora), Lee Hyeon-seung (Il Mare), Yoon Seung-ho (Milky Way Liberation Front), and Jeon Gye-su (Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater). It strikes me as a more difficult subject to portray well than issues related to discrimination, but we'll see...

I'm also excited about a new documentary by Kim Dong-won, whose Repatriation (2004) was maybe the best Korean documentary ever. The new film, a 60-minute documentary titled 63 Years On, tracks down former comfort women (i.e., women forced into sexual slavery during WWII by the Japanese military) living in Korea, China, the Philippines and the Netherlands. This topic has been covered before in Korean documentaries, most famously by Byun Young-joo's The Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997) and My Own Breathing (1999), but Kim's take on this subject is sure to be interesting.

There will also be around 10 brand new Korean independent features, mostly by debut directors. These days, so many low-budget HD works are being made that it's a real challenge to keep up with them. I'm not complaining, mind you -- though some are inevitably very bad, others are well made, so that talent spotting at festivals like Jeonju is becoming a more engaging sport. As for films from other countries, there will be retrospectives on Bela Tarr, Alexander Kluge, cinema of the former Soviet central Asian republics, and Vietnamese cinema.

If any of you readers are living in Korea and have never been to this festival, I strongly urge you to take some time and go. There's something about the small city, the festival's focus on the films, and the great food that makes it feel completely different from Pusan or Puchon. My head is clearer when I am in Jeonju, and I feel more like a cinephile. This year I'll be able to stay longer than usual at the festival, thanks to its dates being pushed a little later (in the past it always conflicted with the Udine Far East Film Festival). So I hope to discuss more about the films and issues at this year's JIFF in a festival report.

Site Update: Review of Forever the Moment (2008)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:05:27 +0900

Review by Darcy Paquet

Forever the Moment

Handball is not the most glamorous of sports, which may explain why Forever the Moment ranks as the world's first handball movie. But like any sport, it can offer up moments of drama, as when the South Korean women's handball team competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The efforts of the players made them briefly famous to the multitudes of South Korean viewers who were following the match on TV. The fact that four years later, a film has been made from this story, and that it has emerged as the first smash hit of 2008, is not in itself surprising. Yet this is in some ways a surprising movie.

The director, for example. Lim Soon-rye made an acclaimed debut in 1996 with Three Friends, the story of three high school graduates hesitating at the threshold of adulthood. In 2001 she followed this up with another story about men, the musical drama Waikiki Brothers. Like her debut, it earned her strong praise from local critics, but both films flopped at the box office and they never really caught on with international film festivals, either. In general, her work displays a strong interest in everyday frustrations and injustices, and a clear-eyed vision that never romanticizes her subjects -- though as viewers we share in the compassion she feels. She's not blockbuster material, in other words. Which is why it's such a surprise that she made a low-budget sports film that expresses so much of her personal style, and that it became a blockbuster.

If there are thrilling sports movies, and emotional sports movies, then Forever the Moment definitely fits in the latter category. The long prelude to the Olympics involves (for us viewers) very little handball. Lim is more interested in the characters, and how they all relate to each other. Mi-sook (Moon So-ri) is a veteran player who was a key member on two unsuccessful Olympic teams. With a young son and a husband who can't pay his debts, she gets a job at a discount mart and takes her son along to handball practice. Hye-kyung (Kim Jung-eun) has retired from playing but has been successful as the coach of a pro team in Japan. When the coach of Korea's national squad suddenly quits, she is asked to fill in -- but she is faced with an undisciplined team filled with older and younger players, and hardly anyone in their prime.

Much of the dramatic action of the first three-quarters of the film involves the changing relationships between the extended cast of characters. Some of the standard developments we expect in any sports move pass by unacknowledged, and some patience is required of us -- in a sense, we are obliged to relate to the team members as ordinary people rather than heroes in the making. When the games do start, however, our patience is rewarded with a truly gripping final reel. Director Lim is not one to exaggerate emotions, but there is no need here. Although not what you would think of as exceptional, the unfolding of the final match is dramatic and suspenseful enough as it is.

Great, climactic moments in the movies are often transformational: they vanquish tragedy and usher in Happily Ever After. But this film is too honest to suggest that that is what is at stake here. The Korean title translates as "The Best Moment in Our Lives," and while a bit sappy, it does more or less capture the point of the story. The moment is important because the players have decided to invest so much into it, even if all they will ultimately take away from it is the memory. We know that everything will return to normal soon after the game ends, and we are already familiar with the rather dull backdrop to their lives back in Korea. This juxtaposition of the thrilling sports finale and the film's stubborn realist point of view is perhaps its greatest strength. The dreams of the women are in themselves bittersweet, which is something you can't say of the average sports movie. (Darcy Paquet)

Site Update: Review of Wide Awake (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:17:17 +0900

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim

Wide Awake

Wide Awake takes one of the real-life medical mysteries -- patients who remain fully conscious (and responsive to pain) but paralyzed during operations, called "intraoperative awareness" -- and weaves a revenge-motivated mystery plot around it. (According to experts this happens shockingly more often than we think -- approximately 20,000 to 40,000 surgery patients in North America every year suffer through this experience, among whom about 30% can feel acute pain) The film opens with a young boy completely traumatized by his heart operation, the experience of feeling a scalpel cutting into his chest, a bone saw whine-grinding into his sternum (ick!), and doctor's fingers rummaging through the insides of his body. Adding insult to injury no one believes his story: it's 1980s Korea, after all. 25 years later, the doctors and nurses who had operated on him begin to die mysteriously. Ryu Jae-woo (Kim Myung-min, Sorum, Into the Mirror), a conscientious surgeon happily married to the beautiful Hee-jin (Kim Yu-mi), begins to suspect the operation-traumatized boy from his childhood is behind these deaths. The prime suspects are Lee Myeong-suk (Kim Roe-ha, Memories of Murder), stalking Dr. Ryu for failing to save his wife, and the seemingly unhinged Uk-hwan (Yu Jun-sang, Tell Me Something's second victim). The hypnosis specialist Oh Chi-hoon (Kim Tae-hoo, Epitaph) also seems to be on to some information about the culprit.

Even though a similar-themed Hollywood film (Awake, with Jessica Alba) was released a few months after it, the long shadow cast on Wide Awake is in fact that of the ultra-popular, Japanese-novel-based medical drama White Tower, through which Kim Myung-min was finally launched into the stardom that he had so far found elusive. It is not accidental, therefore, that the "medical drama" aspect of the movie is many times more fascinating than the murder mystery.

The filmmakers, including newcomer director Lee Gyu-man and co-screenwriter Lee Hyun-jin, spin their yarn as a straightforward whodunit: a crime has been committed, we are given clues to the possible motive, a load of technically complicated but authentic-sounding information regarding the exotic methods of murder are provided, and all this is nicely resolved at the end with the minimum of "what the heck?" confusion. Unfortunately, pacing is rather slack and the mystery is not as well thought-out as it should have been: the climactic big revelation especially is not handled well, relying on the considerable talents of the film's stars to get by (I must say, too, that hypnotism is definitely being over-used by Korean thrillers as a plot device). It should be said in the film's defense that, like Black House's gutsy Grand Guignol finale, the film does feature one act of revenge, which, like the more famous one in Old Boy, makes instinctive logical sense and is truly devastating in its supreme cruelty.

But all this would have been for naught had director Lee chosen the wrong actors. None of the leads are asked to do anything extraordinary but they inhabit their frankly two-dimensional roles with admirable professionalism and requisite conviction. In particular, few people will doubt Kim Myung-min's ability to carry a whole picture after Wide Awake: he does a superb job of conveying the self-doubt of a doctor whose faith in his medical skills is being eroded, and makes us believe in the soul-shattering agony of a decent Hippocratite who learned that his surgical prowess was deviously manipulated as a tool for evil.

Wide Awake is not as powerful as it could have been, (I kept thinking while watching it how a straightforward medical drama in the mold of White Tower could have been so superior to all this whodunit stuff) but it is certainly a step in the right direction, in that it doesn't pretend to be smarter or more important than it is. The film is definitely recommended to fans of White Tower, which probably would be its biggest constituency in East Asia, at least for the time being. (Kyu Hyun Kim)

Site Update: Interview with Bong Joon-ho

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:50:33 +0900

An Interview with Bong Joon-ho

by Giuseppe Sedia

Born in 1969 in Daegu, Bong studied sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul. In 1994-1995 he attended the Korean Academy of Fine Arts, where he produced his first short films. His first feature-length movie, Barking Dogs Never Bite ("Flanders-ui gae") won the Fipresci Prize at the Hong Kong Film Festival in 2001. Two years later he directed the serial killer movie Memories of Murder ("Salinui Chueok"), considered by many critics to be his best feature. In 2004 he produced a digital short for the Jeonju International Film Festival along with Asian directors Ishii Sogo and Yu Lik Wai for the collective feature Digital Short Films by Three Directors. His third film, The Host ("Gwoemul"), won Best Picture at the inaugural Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, and established a national box office record in Korea with over 13 million tickets sold. Currently, he is working on a segment of an omnibus film focusing on the city of Tokyo involving also the French cineastes Leo Carax and Michel Gondry. This interview is extracted from a conversation with Bong Joon-ho during the Dongfang Film Festival in Naples (Italy).

How did you start approaching cinema?

I used to watch plenty of movies as a child. Television had a vital importance to my formation, because VHS tapes were not circulating yet in South Korea at that time. In the late 1980s, together with other sociology students, I created "Cineclick" -- a local organization devoted to discussion of Mass Communication and Media Arts.

Could you tell me more about Cineclick's activities?

We promoted screenings of Japanese and European films still unfamiliar to South Korean students. Cineclick attempted to encourage debate on audiovisual culture, and this experience helped to expand my vision of cinema. My gaze on moving images eventually became more reflexive and conscious. In 1993 we also shot a 16mm collective documentary, before I completed a short film vaguely based on the surrealistic atmosphere contained in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986).

What about your relationship with South Korean producers?

To date, I have been able to take advantage of a certain protege status. I have been both lucky and sharp to create durable relations with local producers. Tcha Seung-jae who produced my first two feature films has always trusted me. He defended the artistic choices I made, even when my debut film failed miserably at the box office.

Do you think that the theatrical flop of Flandersui gae (2000, pictured left) drove you towards film genres that were on the outside more conventional?

The screenplay of Flandersui gae is mainly based on my personal experiences, compared to the following features which were taken from news stories occurring in my country. The interiors for that film were shot at my former flat in Seoul. It can be considered as an autobiographical comedy, which follows the developmental pattern of a thriller. Who kidnapped the dog? Some settings like the hot-water heating room in the building may seem to evoke a dark ambiance that is far from comedic.

Your second film Salinui Cheok (2003) deals with a mass murder. Japanese cineaste Kiyoshi Kurosawa revealed that Se7en (1996), directed by David Fincher, had an influence on the direction of Cure ("Kyua", 1997). Did you take any inspiration from Hollywood serial killer movies such as The Silence of Lambs?

Both American movies you mentioned have become milestones in nineties cinema. They continue to exert a transversal influence worldwide on the new generation of film-makers. Besides I've always been an enthusiast of Japanese directors such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shohei Imamura. Nevertheless, I don't consider them to have had a great influence on Salinui Cheok, which is based on a true story that really occurred in Gyeonggi Province between 1986 and 1991.

"Memories of Murder is made up of an unrelenting series of failures, frustrating the proper political vision of a country", argued Antoine Thirion in Cahiers du Cinèma. The story seems to implode, being adverse to any turning point. How did you come up to this narrative structure?

I attempted to focus on the characters' visceral feeling of ineffectiveness. The police detectives are doomed to fail in their investigations. This mysterious serial killer who truly haunted South Korean people twenty years ago still stays unpunished in our country.

This moving picture displays once more Song Kang-ho's actorial talent. How did you come to collaborate with him?

Despite the convincing performance of Lee Sung-jae, Flandersui gae was definitely a "floppola" in Seoul theaters. Therefore I decided to work with Song Kang-ho. His popularity was constantly growing, even among Western audiences since Park Chan-wok picked him for Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). Yet we should not forget that Song Kang-ho was already showing his talent on the stage until he left his theatrical career behind in 1997.

Could you tell us more about your contribution to the project Digital Short Films by Three Directors 2004?

The three of us each worked on our own. I have to admit that I didn't even view the episodes directed by Ishii Sogo and Yu Lik Wai. Apart from the aesthetic results, this cinematic experience personally gave me the opportunity to check the possibilities offered by digital production.

Loss of control over reality is a topic that remains under the skin throughout your filmography. Panic attacks usually erode the relationships of the characters you invented. Even Gwoemul, despite the happy ending, gives evidence to this feature

The concept of chaos has always fascinated me from a philosophical perspective. Moreover I would mention also a peculiar form of chaos reflecting the social and cultural context in South Korea. Anyhow, the positive epilogue in Gwoemul is deliberately pretentious. Just consider that the Park family is slaughtered before the final victory against the monster.

The Gwoemul monster iconography is very different from the classical appearance of bipedal monsters such as Godzilla and King Kong. How did you come up with its final look?

The monster's appearance is not based on a pre-existing model. The starting idea was taken again from a true story. I read in the newspapers about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in the Han River. The monster design came mainly from this strange discovery.

Do you consider that monstrous creatures on screen, such as the North Korean Pulgasari, could convey ideological and moral values?

The role of the monster in Gwoemul is progressively reduced throughout the film. The initial scene set in the military laboratory reveals an attraction-repulsion dynamic towards Americans that is also responsible for the fake virus invention that will disband Park family. However familiar relationships are most assuredly a dominant topic in the movie.

Gwoemul won funding from the Pusan International Film Festival's Pusan Promotion Plan, and attracted more than 13 million people in South Korean theaters. How does it change your approach to direction when you work on high-budgeted features?

The remake rights to this film have already been sold to a major movie company. I should confess that I am growing weary of writing screenplays. Sometimes I question myself about the future with the same concern that thrills horror film movie-goers. However that may be, my next movie is a low-medium budget feature which is currently in development.

Giuseppe Sedia, NAPLES October 2007

Translation by Kim Oen Joung
Additional translation by the author

Site Update: Review of The Salaryman (1962)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:37:19 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

The Salaryman (1962)

Early on in Lee Bong-rae's The Salaryman, our patriarch (Kim Seung-ho) is placed in an ethical dilemma enable the boss in his plan to embezzle money from the company, or get fired. Within these limited choices imposed by those in power over his well-being, he chooses the latter. Having given his last month's wages to a writer friend extremely down on his luck, our patriarch's economic position becomes dire in its own way, with bill collectors as reliable and punctual as he is coming by his house. Following his firing, he soon finds his options for work are limited due to age discrimination in the job market. Eventually he finds hope in a position that explicitly states age is not a negative mark. All he has to do is excel at the exam, which he's convinced is sure to be a shoe-in considering his experience. Unfortunately, he soon discovers the exam for the position is merely a formality. The promising position has already been promised to his daughter, (who had to quit school to help the family), by the man she's courting at the same firm.

The Salaryman is a variation on the oft-told morality tale of why bad things happen to good people. Our patriarch is a sensible, upstanding member of the community. He teaches his children about ethical matters as minor as punctuality and as major as democracy. (Although when his father stops his son from urinating in the street, our patriarch finds his words used against him. "It's a free country" the small, smart-ass says.) Our patriarch is a man beloved in his neighborhood. The neighborhood boys form a fan club of sorts, parading around and praising his ethics after he sees to it that a missing ball is returned to the rightful owner. Even though he doesn't make the unethical choice at the beginning, he does stray a few times, lying about dying to avoid paying a bill and asking his daughter to help him cheat on the job exam. Still, overall we have a lovable father for whom you feel pity that he's in the precarious position he is after making the just choice. We feel for the man's troubles when he proclaims "I'm utterly useless" late in the film. We all know how this will end. Just as a film in the United States under the Hays Code promoted the punishment of the 'uppity' woman or the Lesbian or Gay man, the South Korean film of this time expects a sentimental resolution that reinforces 'traditional' family roles. Acknowledging that, I was able to hold back my circa-cynic quite well. I allowed the film to be a product of its time.

And The Salaryman further underscores how enjoyable the films of this time, the 1960's, are. Even in spite of the ten minutes or so of muted visuals in the only extant print, I was engaged throughout and found the relationship of this father with the rest of his family endearing in its construction. There is even a lovely flicker of a feminist fissure in the text. The father laments how his daughter "took" his job, but we all saw him in that classroom cheating, whispering assistance with the answers. So although the 1960's needed the patriarch re-pedestaled as pillar of the family, The Salaryman isn't as heavy-handed about it as other films I've seen. Plus, there's enough rumbling from South Korea's rapid modernization requiring re-thinking of 'traditional roles' that I was left with a smile on my face at the end just like the characters from South Korea's past reflecting back at my present. (Adam Hartzell)

The Salaryman ("Wolgeup-jaengi"). Directed by Lee Bong-rae. Screenplay by Yang Yun-shik. Starring Kim Seung-ho, Joo Jeung-nyeo, Eom Aeng-ran, Lee Su-ryeon, Bang Seong-ja, Ahn Sung-ki, Choi Nam-hyun, Park Am, Kim Hee-gap. Cinematography by Lee Byeong-sam. Produced by Yeona Film Company. 98 min, 35mm, b&w.

Site Update: Review of Someone Behind You (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:23:20 +0900

Someone Behind You

Ka-in (Yun Jin-seo, Old Boy) is a high school student, adept at fencing, with loving parents, a pretty younger sister and a hunky med-student boyfriend (Yi Ki-woo, Tale of Cinema). Everything seems to be perfect, until one day her aunt suffers a terrible accident on her wedding day. She is then graphically stabbed to death by another aunt while hospitalized. Reeling from shock, Ka-in soon finds herself the target of the inexplicable murderous rage of her friends and even family members. To figure out what is going on, she enlists the help of a creepy classmate Seok-min (Park Ki-woong, The Art of Fighting).

Someone Behind Me is based on a comic book by Kang Kyung-ok, which apparently is a straightforward supernatural thriller, attributing the cause of Ka-in's horrendous situation to a family curse (naturally, the curse descends down through the agnatic lineage, this being a Korean one). The movie version dabbles with that premise, then abandons it altogether and turns itself into a far-fetched murder mystery, finally resolving into a yet another rip-off of Tale of Two Sisters, with a chunk bitten off from Death Note thrown in for a good measure.

To put it charitably, Someone's screenplay is a mess. Penned by five scribes including the director, Lee Shin-ae, who previously wrote Fox Stairs, and Lee Hyo-chul, responsible for Hanbando (?!), it is a dreadful mishmash of different agendas and styles, without any coherent sense of what it's groping for. Adding insult to injury is Oh Ki-hwan's (Last Present, shudder) lugubrious direction, which tiredly follows one set-up after another. Particularly harebrained is the character of Min-seok: the last-minute revelation regarding him is totally predictable but is nonetheless a hoot. I can easily imagine Korean moviegoers rolling their eyes and hurling insults at the close-up of him grinning sinisterly in that eyebrow-obscuring gappa hairstyle.

Nearly wasted are two excellent actresses, Yun Jin-seo as Ka-in and Kim So-eun (The Show Must Go On) as her sister. Yun is basically given an impossible role to play, a young girl against whom the whole world has turned murderous, but she pulls it off without ever relying on histrionics, even under the overtly melodramatic direction given by director Oh. Kim is ridiculously cute but shows a lot of potential. The interactions between these two actresses are frankly the only believable part of the movie. While Someone gets a few goodwill points by staying away from long-haired Sadako clones, as a thriller or horror film it is simply lame, not even unintentionally funny to qualify as camp entertainment. Should be of interest only for those fans of Yun Jin-seo and Kim So-eun who don't mind their favorite actresses put through the wringer in almost sadistically unimaginative ways. (Kyu Hyun Kim)

Darcy's Blog: Top News Stories of 2007

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:56:44 +0900

2008.01.03: Top news stories of 2007 Since these days I haven't been able to keep up with the old news pages or newsletter, I thought I would take this chance to look back at the top news stories of 2007 (from my perspective, at least). It's been an eventful year, as always!

#1. Crisis, Crisis, Crisis. The never-ending news story this year has been the recent troubles of Korean film companies. Admissions are going down, exports are crashing, the cost of making movies continues to rise, and audiences seem to be re-kindling their interest in Hollywood films. It's still too early to tell where all of this is going, and part of it may just be a case of overly inflated expectations, but certainly the mood this year has been grim.

#2. Jeon Do-yeon wins Best Actress at Cannes for her role in Secret Sunshine. Korea's highest profile acting award since Kang Su-yeon won in Venice in 1987 for Surrogate Woman couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Here's hoping that her next film, a low budget art film by Lee Yoon-ki, boosts her growing international profile.

#3. The uproar over D-War. Korea had a taste of its own culture wars in August, when Shim Hyung-rae's mega-budget monster D-War hit the screens. Independent director Leesong Hee-il ridiculed the film and the hype surrounding it, comparing it to 1970's-era excitement over the export of toasters to the U.S. Furious fanboys responded with a massive, homophobic-tinged attack on his blog. Critics sparred on TV talk shows, viewer rating boards on the internet turned into angry battlegrounds, and Shim himself publicly sulked about how nobody in the Korean film industry respected him. Even I got called some rather choice names on the internet after I slammed it on Cine21's critics board, though nobody ended up attacking this site. All this over an infantile and rather incompetent monster flick that ultimately bombed in U.S. theaters... was it really worth it?

#4. Korean actors go international. The Korean Wave seems to be fading in many respects, but a string of top Korean stars were cast in international projects in 2007. Jun Ji-hyun (aka Gianna Jun) will take the lead in Blood: The Last Vampire. Actor/singer Rain will take a small role in Speed Racer. Jang Dong-gun stars in Laundry Warrior, which is being shot in New Zealand. Song Hye-gyo will headline a small New York-set U.S. independent film. Lee Byung-heon will get a small role opposite Josh Hartnett in I Come With the Rain. Jang Hyuk took an English-speaking role in a Singapore film. And there continues to be interest in other actors as well. In the coming year, we'll get to actually see all of these films, and find out if they're any good...

#5. Telecoms companies move into the film industry. In terms of business news, one of the biggest new trends is the newly active role being taken by Korea's biggest telecoms companies. SK Telecom will launch its own film division in 2008. KTH is funding expansion by its subsidiary, Sidus FNH, into distribution. Both companies will also likely become active in IPTV (internet protocol TV), which many hope will become an important future source of revenue for local films. Is this the start of a new era?

#6. US-Korea FTA deal concluded (but not ratified). This free trade deal, which still may not happen if either legislature rejects it, will have a greater effect on the TV industry than on the film industry. Nonetheless, one clause of the treaty "locks in" the recent reduction of the Screen Quota, and there will also be an extention of copyright from 50 to 70 years -- which will affect classic films.

#7. First film labor deal concluded. Lower ranking Korean crewmembers have struggled through with miniscule pay and virtually no benefits or insurance for years, while actors and other top talent have seen their salaries skyrocket in recent years. This labor deal is intended to improve things for people on the lower rungs, though unfortunately the timing is not great -- it came into effect just as the industry was embarking on a widespread effort to lower budgets. Only a few films have complied with the new labor rules so far, but in time it may become the new industry standard.

#8. IndieSpace opens. Seoul and other major cities have a number of arthouse theaters, but the newly-opened IndieSpace is the first theater devoted entirely to Korean low-budget independent films. Each film that debuts at the theater will play for two weeks, and through this venue we should be able to watch a lot of films that weren't available before. Great news!

#9. Megabox sold to foreign investors. Megabox ranks as Korea's third or fourth biggest theater chain, and this year it was sold to a consortium of investors headed by an Australian bank. There may be less to this than meets the eye, as Megabox's sister company Showbox has signed a long term deal to continue operating the company. But personally, I wish all of the big theater chains would be sold off. It's not healthy or fair to have the biggest distributors owning and operating so many movie theaters across Korea.

#10. CHIFFS holds a successful first edition. There is certainly no shortage of film festivals in Korea -- a recent Film 2.0 article says there are more than 40 of them registered with KOFIC -- but the successful launch of the Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul (CHIFFS) was good news. Unlike most festivals, CHIFFS features almost no new films, and instead places its focus on great movies of the past. There were large numbers of old Korean films screened, as well as Hollywood classics, Asian musicals, director retrospectives, and more. Also, though some other festivals have troubled to attract viewers, CHIFFS had close to 70% of its seats filled. I'm looking forward to the second edition, scheduled for the end of August.

Site Update: Review of Resurrection of the Butterfly (2007)

darcy@koreanfilm.org — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:43:57 +0900

Review by Adam Hartzell

Resurrection of the Butterfly

I don't require a film to be completely inspiring and profound. I prefer it to be, but when a film provides a lackluster or non-existent impact, I encourage myself to see what significance might remain for the film in the course of a review rather than focus exclusively on the critical slam. That prefaced, Resurrection of the Butterfly requires that I look for something flickering on the screen outside of entertainment and/or enlightenment value.

Competing in competition at the 11th PiFan, Resurrection of the Butterfly (the Korean title translates as "Shadow") was a project coupling a student director (Kim Min-sook) with a more experienced director (Lee Jung-gook). This is something to salvage from the film. I would encourage more such projects regardless of the less than succulent fruits born of this particular seedling.

The film connects the three primary actors through roles across two stories of similar love triangles, one taking place well in the past and the other taking place in the present. Director Kim's story works off the historical character of Non-gae, a kisaeng known for remaining loyal to the Joseon dynasty by killing the Japanese commander who conquers her village rather than transferring her services as a prostitute/performer to the Japanese. (There is a shrine to her near Chokseongnu called "Uiam" or "the rock of righteousness.") Liberties are taken with this historical character's story that might upset the purists in the audience, but no claim is made by director Kim to be revisioning the history, in that she doesn't seek to claim her vision as truth. This is merely speculative history, a what if' scenario to play out the possibilities if Non-gae had failed to kill the Japanese commander. In this version, Non-gae still remains within the spirit of her legend by becoming a spirit, one that haunts the Japanese commander.

The second story, overseen by director Lee, finds a man whose head injury limits his recall into the events that preceded his appearance deep into the mountains, where a mountain ranger has found him. Only a diary leads to clues about who this man is and what he's done. We discover from the diary that he was brought to the mountains with his girlfriend, a botany enthusiast, in search of a rare plant. On this journey they stumbled along the path of a young guide. As the story unfolds, we begin to question this man's position in this story relayed in the diary.

Ironically, it is the student's first half that shows greater promise than the veteran's second half. Veteran director Lee happens to have directed what is perhaps my least favorite of all South Korean films, The Letter. What I found unpalatable about The Letter was the excruciatingly drawn out, and falsely felt, melodramatic emotions. I understand that Korean culture allows for a greater expression of sadness, loss, and grief. (And I understand my opinion about The Letter is at odds with the audience that made it the most popular South Korean film in 1997.) What in the West we might determine overzealous might be more acceptable emoting in South Korea. But several South Korean directors and actresses/actors are still able to take this excess' of express and allow even the most cynical of viewers to find such expressions believable. Director Lee demonstrates in his half of this project that he still can't handle the truth of these extended emotions in the incredibly poor way the wounded hiker's terror is presented in the second half of this film under his control.

My impression of Resurrection of the Butterfly may have been affected by the poor audio and visuals of the screening I attended at PiFan that was noted by, if I recall correctly, producer Byun Jang-wan. But I don't think even better sound and clearer and more vibrant colors could have saved this film. I commend the idea of coupling a neophyte with a veteran and don't find myself turning away from hope for better things from student director Kim Min-sook just yet. (I hear she directed a very compelling short called "Apple" of which others speak highly.) But director Lee Jung-gook's half further demonstrates that his cinematic letters are ones I'd best leave unopened, if not have returned to sender. (Hey, I didn't say I don't submit critical slams, I only said I don't like to center on them exclusively.) (Adam Hartzell)