Love in the Time of Debt: My Dear Enemy (멋진 하루, Meotjin Haru) 2008

Part of Rex Baylon's ongoing feature on director Lee Yoon-ki.

To speak about love in a contemporary real world setting and ignore the logistics of survival has been the bane of the romance genre. In order to sidestep these problems filmmakers in the past have either focused their eye to the upstairs-downstairs drama of the 1% or offered up sentimental stories of shopgirls being wooed by nebbish young suitors. Modern day romantic comedies haven’t fared any better since most are concerned with merely finding one’s true love and quickly fading out once our two lovers are finally together. The romance genre’s evolution through the years has ignored the economics of love in favor of offering up quirky characters in contrived situations.

In Lee Yoon-ki’s My Dear Enemy money is the impetus for the two ex-lovers reuniting and the reason why they spend the entire day together. Instead of cloying attempts to tell a story about two people falling in love again while draped on all sides by a scenic urban backdrop we get tense scenes where petty grudges are rehashed and even the happier moments of the past are remembered through a cloudy veneer of regret and nostalgia. Far from offering up an affected view of modern day relationships My Dear Enemy is a realistic character study of the ways that hate and love are used to mask one’s insecurities, it’s a travelogue, a visual and aural document, of Seoul at the cusp of a worldwide economic recession, and a charming romantic comedy.

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BIFF 2012: Tumbleweed (창수, Chang-su) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

The gangster film, a genre that has found its way into just about every national film industry on the planet, is no stranger to Korean cinema. While the country has produced its fair share of compelling gangland sagas, stretching from the 1997 trio of Beat, No . 3, and Green Fish to more glossy and baroque undertakings such as A Dirty Carnival (2006) and this year’s Nameless Gangster, some of the most memorable films have been those that have been filtered through the prism of Korea’s filmmaking mainstay, the melodrama. Romance and gangsters have been combined to great effect in films such as Kim Jee-woon’s A Bittersweet Life (2005) but some of the most surprising examples have featured criminals at the bottom end of the pecking order.

Song Sae-heun’s Failan (2001) featured Choi Min-sik as a hapless thug who develops feelings for his shame immigrant wife (Cecilia Chung) following her death. The film did away with the gloss and style we often associate with gangster films and instead focused on a bizarre relationship which in many ways acted as a path of redemption for Choi’s character. Similarly, Yang Ik-june’s Breathless (2009) followed a gruff and violent money collector in a rundown neighborhood who develops an odd friendship with a high school girl (played by Kim Kkottbi) that could become his salvation.

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Miss Conspirator (미쓰 GO, Misseu Go) 2012

By Rex Baylon

Being an avid fan of anything, be it a film, a band, or an author’s work, comes at a price; a gnawing hunger to consume our drug regardless of the social, mental, and financial toll it might take. Aside from that overwhelming desire there is also a parallel drive to feel something new for a work that we have poured our heads and hearts wholeheartedly into. This soon breeds insular personalities who operate in a fantasy world where in our mind’s eye we hear Philip Glass's score from the Qatsi trilogy being played as we engage in the most banal of rituals like writing an e-mail or waiting for the bus.

For agoraphobic Chun Soo-roo (Ko Hyeon-jeong) her world is the heightened reality of the crime genre. A dual world of cops and robbers, heists, capers, and double and triple crosses, where money switches hands faster than henchmen switch sides. A farewell goodbye to a friend at the airport becomes the elaborate setup for a great story. However menacing serial killers and rabid gangsters do not populate these dark alleyways. Instead, director Park Chul-kwan borrows more from Ocean's Eleven (The original Sinatra version as well as the Soderbergh remakes) and Catch Me If You Can (2002) than from gritty crime dramas like The Yellow Sea (2010) or Nameless Gangster (2012). From the inspired faux-retro Saul Bass-inspired title sequences to the klezmer heavy score Miss Conspirator (2012) is a movie built firmly on the clichés of suspense pictures. Of course as any student of the genre knows there is no better master of suspense then Alfred Hitchcock, who invented the grammar of suspense for film.

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WKR: Eungyo, Taste of Money and LeeSong Hee-il in the Spotlight (11/24-11/30, 2012)

A number of current releases covered this week, including three films by LeeSong Hee-il as well as writeups the LKFF selection Eungyo, the recently-released Taste of Money, and a pair of favorable reviews from Variety's Maggie Lee.

UPCOMING FILMS

Pluto

(Variety, November 25, 2012)

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WKR: New Indie Releases Take Center Stage (11/17-11/23, 2012)

Juvenile Offender and National Security were both released and reviewed this week while Rain's R2B: Return to Base and The Thieves get a few writeups in this week's Weekly Korean Reviews update.

UPCOMING FILMS

El Condor Pasa

(Modern Korean Cinema, November 20, 2012)

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BIFF 2012: El Condor Pasa (콘돌은 날아간다, Kondoleun Nalaganda) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

A regular staple at the Busan Film Festival, Jeon Soo-il is a local filmmaker whose body of work has steadily brought him acclaim and accolades from around the world. He is not as famous as some of the more prominent arthouse Korean filmmakers but nonetheless he is an important figure from Korea’s independent film scene.

Now on his seventh feature, Jeon Soo-il’s style, which has always been unique but malleable, has of late, become more concrete. Last year’s Pink (also a Busan Film Festival selection) was a small breakthrough for him, earning him more recognition than his previous works. Though not an easy film (none of his works are), Pink was much more accessible, due in large part to the careful and gorgeous visual aesthetic through which he carved his narrative. With its muted, earthy color palette, and deliberate compositions, which emphasized the distance between the story’s various protagonists, his film, despite its frequent silences and stillness, teemed with life.

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KOFA Treasures: Kim Soo-yong's The Seaside Village (갯마을, Gaenmaeul) 1965

Ongoing series on classic Korean film recently made available for free and with English subtitles on Youtube courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.

During this year's 14^th Udine Far Easy Film Festival I had the great privilege and pleasure of attending Darcy Paquet’s 1970s Korean cinema retrospective. As it turns out, among the ten features presented, some of my favorites were island dramas.  The three that were programmed (Iodo, 1977; Splendid Outing, 1978; and The Divine Bow, 1979) were fascinating works that were both quasi-horrors and compelling films about women, which highlighted their marginalized roles in society.  Characters in these films, especially women, were either transplanted to remote fishing islands, which for them became sites of horror, or grew up there without ever leaving, any attempts at escape doomed from the outset.

Kim Soo-young was behind Splendid Outing, a film that shares an enormous amount in common with Bedevilled (2010), to the point where it would not surprise me if it was actually the blueprint for Jang Chul-soo’s incendiary film. However, long before that, Kim made The Seaside Village, a stunning and deeply textured work from 1960s Korean cinema, which dabbles in some taboos that would likely not have been tolerated by the government at the time.

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WKR: Current Korean Hits, LKFF and Classic Film Reviews (11/10-11/16, 2012)

Lots of reviews in from the LKFF and more than classic films reviewed than usual, thanks in large part to a big new update on koreanfilm.org.

CURRENT FILMS

A Werewolf Boy

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, November 12, 2012)

Confession of Murder

(Screen Daily, November 9, 2012)

Masquerade

(oriental nightmares, November 12, 2012)

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Meaningful Stillness: The Quiet Pursuit of Happiness in Jang Kun-jae's Sleepless Night - Part II

Part V of a special MKC feature on Jang Kun-jae.

For Sleepless Night, Jang and his tiny cast and crew lived in close quarters for the duration of the film’s short production. Eating meals and sleeping together in the director’s apartment, which served as the main location of the film, they also shared their thoughts and worries. Their marriages, as well as the minutiae of their daily lives, became a part of the filmmaking process. I can only imagine, but it must have made for a very special experience for those involved, especially given the result on screen.

The film is exceedingly relatable and highly personal. The character’s thoughts are almost never a mystery, despite frequently sparse dialogue. Much of this is down to the splendid performances of the two leads but it is also part of the fabric of the film. For me, these silences that dot the narrative are examples of ‘meaningful stillness.’ They feel important, as though a statement is being made: however nothing is forced upon us. Perhaps they merely exist, like fleeting moments that just happened to be caught on camera: but they feature no action. It could be that these lulls derive their meaning purely from the context afforded by prior scenes: yet they are not in the least bit contrived.

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Meaningful Stillness: The Quiet Pursuit of Happiness in Jang Kun-jae's Sleepless Night - Part I

Part III of a special MKC feature on Jang Kun-jae.

Each person’s individual journey in life is an ever-changing narrative, subject to the faintest tinkering. Our goals are equally malleable targets: a few change from year to year, others switch throughout the course of a day. Some of our dreams are dearly cherished: we hold onto them throughout our lives, yet these too are subject to change. The details within our ambitions vary over time as we accumulate new experiences: they shift to fit our evolving personalities. Though we, along with our thoughts and desires, are in perpetual flux, there could be one thing we collectively and unswervingly aspire to. We all want to be happy.

Though an outwardly simple notion, happiness is a truly complex idea that is utterly different for each and every person. Purely subjective, one person’s joy can equate to another’s misery. Yet there are things that we aspire to as a society in order to achieve some greater collective contentment. South Korea offers a very interesting example of this as it has leapt forward with its booming economy. At the risk of sounding a bit absolute, generally speaking happiness was hard to come by for many decades in Korean society as it struggled with the separation of its peninsula, a disruptive war and successive authoritarian regimes.

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A Love Story Abruptly Ended: Eighteen (회오리 바람, Hwiori Baram) 2009

Part I of a special MKC feature on Jang Kun-jae.

By Rex Baylon

The beauty and innocence of young love might be the greatest hoax perpetuated by the mainstream media. A couple walking hand in hand together while surrounded on all sides by a bucolic setting, two lovers sitting in a warm cozy diner with a straw in each of their mouths while they share a milkshake, or the hustle and bustle of a crowded noisy street muted by two lovestruck individuals stealing a kiss or embrace. The young and not so young are fed these cliché images to the point that artists can’t help but regurgitate them back to their respective audiences. The romanticism that was first born from the mind of Goethe has mutated into the “Hallmark moment”, sappy, sentimental, and dangerous. At it’s most idealistic, young love offers a safe haven for youths who’ve experienced the joy and elation of caring and feeling protective over someone other than themselves, but at its worst it can be an easy excuse for self-absorbed and destructive behavior.

In Jang Kun-jae’s debut, Eighteen (Hwioribaram, 2009), these two distinctive poles are examined through a very familiar story of young love that ought not to be. Yet, unlike many Korean romantic melodramas this is not a linear narrative charting a relationship from meet-cute to break-up. In fact, it begins months after the break-up. It is a post-mortem love story told mainly through flashback, blending cinema-verite with splashes of magic realism. The young couple in the film are normal run-of-the mill Korean teenagers: they’re attached to their smartphones, they’ve got school and parents badgering them about college, and their idea of the future doesn’t stretch any further than a few months. There is nothing distinctive about their lives or personality.

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A Good Rain Knows (호우시절, Howoo shijeol) 2009

By Rex Baylon

What do you do when a filmmaker you respect and champion begins to make works that you dislike? Do you unabashedly support it and ignore the work’s inherent flaws? Do you ignore the work, pretend to suffer from cinephilic amnesia and hope that the offending film will fall through the cracks of time and be mercifully forgotten? Or do you finally sit down and deal with the fact that people, no less filmmakers, are imperfect artisans and that although our initial response to their work may have been unabashed excitement, it must be tempered and we must attempt to look at each new work free from the distractions of the past.

Having begun life as part of a three-part omnibus film entitled Chengdu, I Love You (2009) with contributions by Chinese filmmaker Cu Jian and Hong Kong auteur Fruit Chan. Hur Jin-ho’s A Good Rain Knows (2009) evolved out of that project and became its own feature. Being a Pan-Asian production Hur cast Korean superstar Jung Woo-sung, fresh off the production of Kim Jee-won’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), to play the poet-turned-businessman Park Dong-ha and Mainland Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan, who worked on the controversial Lu Chuan picture City of Life and Death (2009) that same year, was cast as May, Dong-ha’s melancholic love interest.

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WKR: Im Kwon-taek London Retro and More From Busan (10/27-11/02, 2012)

Though it ended almost three weeks ago, the pace of reviews coming in from this year's Busan International Film Festival has yet to let up. Additionally, a comprehensive Im Kwon-taek retrospective is currently taking place in London with Eastern Kicks leading the charge on the review front.

UPCOMING FILMS

Don't Cry Mommy

(Variety, October 29, 2012)

El Condor Pasa

(Film Business Asia, October 28, 2012)

Juvenile Offender

(The Hollywood Reporter, October 31, 2012)

Pluto

(Film Business Asia, October 29, 2012)

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Barbie (바비, 2012)

Though I have long been a fan of the aesthetic merits of Korean cinema, I also realize that there exists a dark side to Korean culture, a pervasive materialism that often favors beauty and perfection above all else. Designer goods and Western trappings have quickly become staples of life for modern urban Koreans. So as Korea has leapt forward in the rush of globalization, what has been lost? Director Lee Sang-woo, with his new feature Barbie, cuts right through the façade as he exposes the dark underbelly of contemporary consumerism.

A young girl (Soon-young) takes care of her sister (Soon-ja) and their mentally-ill grandfather while their mercenary uncle (Mang-tek) hatches a plan to sell her to a wealthy American. The American arrives in town with his daughter but Soon-young doesn’t want to abandon her family. The sickly Soon-ja, who plays with her Barbie and wears makeup, desperately wants to take her place. Meanwhile the American is harboring a secret.

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WKR: More From Busan and Doomsday Book Plays Toronto After Dark (10/20-10/26, 2012)

A few more reviews trickle in from Busan while Doomsday Book plays at Toronto's After Dark Festival.

UPCOMING FILMS

Azooma

(Variety, October 20, 2012)

Juvenile Offender

(Film Business Asia, October 26, 2012)

The Russian Novel

(The Hollywood Reporter, October 25, 2012)

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WKR: Busan Winds Up (10/13-10/19, 2012)

Few more pieces come in from Busan as the festival wraps up, not to mention some reviews of brand new films on the Korean marquees.

UPCOMING FILMS

Doctor

(Variety, October 14, 2012)

National Security

(Film Business Asia, October 19, 2012)

(Modern Korean Cinema, October 13, 2012)

Touch

(Word From the ROK, October 13, 2012)

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BIFF 2012: National Security (남영동1985, Namyeong-dong 1985) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

Corruption, injustice and terror have always been a sad reality of politics. Over the years, many filmmakers have gone to great lengths (sometimes even putting their lives in peril) in a bid to give a voice to the victims of political malfeasance and to shed light on the frequently covered-up truths within the halls of power. Notable examples include Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969). Among the pantheon of political works it is true that those that endure are the ones that shock, works that can elicit an audible gasp from audience members. However, a filmmaker must be careful not to go too far and should also pay due consideration to narrative and filmic requirements when presenting a politically charged narrative on screen.

Chung Ji-young made a big comeback following a 13-year absence this time last year when Unbowed debuted at the 16^th edition of the Busan Film Festival. Hot on its heels and proving that it wasn’t a fluke, he has returned with a searing indictment of the brutal Chun Doo-hwan administration that terrorized Korea for the better part of the 1980s.

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WKR: Busan Showcases New Korean Films, The Thieves Opens Stateside (10/06-10/12, 2012)

A raft of Busan reviews as the festival is in full swing! The Thieves also gets a few big broadsheet writeups in the US after opening there on limited release.

UPCOMING FILMS

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BIFF 2012: Pluto (명왕성, Myeongwangsong) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

Film festivals can be a great place to catch up with big films from established luminaries of world cinema but for the ardent cinephile, the most exciting thing is to make a fresh discovery. With patience and some discerning selecting, you will almost always come away with a few pleasant surprises but, while it is wonderful to stumble upon an accomplished debut or sophomore films from emerging talents in the field, every so often you will see something that gives you a special feeling. It is an unmistakable sense of being part of something new and exciting, in the presence of an artist with raw talent, effortless ability and an intuitive understanding of film. These spine-tingling moments don’t happen at every festival but when they do it makes all the searching worthwhile.

Shin Su-won’s second feature Pluto gave me this feeling. However, before singing too much of its praises, I should say that it is a flawed work. More than the film itself, it is the potential of the director that gave me goosebumps. Without a doubt, Shin is about to be a major player in Korean cinema and could well become a force on the international scene before long.

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BIFF 2012: Fatal (가시꽃) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

Fragile and ephemeral, life is a series of moments, of complicated and random connections that constitute the fabric of our character. Each decision we make affects our path irrevocably: our actions may not always be consequential but they are nonetheless inerasable. Like a thin sheet of glass, our lives can shatter in an instant. The briefest moment can reveal our brittle fragility.

Fatal, a New Currents section debut feature from Lee Donku, begins with a life-altering moment for five people. A young woman has been drugged and raped by a gang of high school students, though one of them is an unwilling participant bullied into performing an act that will torment him for the rest of his life. 10 years later, this now 28-year-old man works for a low-rent clothes manufacturer. An encounter with a Christian group of missionaries on the street prompts him to seek some kind of salvation through religion but when he joins the group he discovers that one of his new colleagues is the woman that he and his friends raped a decade prior.

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