ZEITGEIST

Review by Duncan Mitchel

    A World Without Mom (1977)

When I was a kid, I was a fan of Gertrude Chandler Warner's books about the Boxcar Children, four orphaned siblings who run away and live in an abandoned boxcar to keep from being separated. It's a popular premise to this day: think of Lemony Snicket, or the two brothers in The Host. Children expect to be taken care of, but dislike being dependent, so fantasies of being on one's own have a perennial appeal. Of course, in Korea as in many other countries, children have sometimes had to be independent. But fantasies, which can be stopped at will, are not reality. Kids can experience the heady, scary rush of being independent for a while, then go back to their ordinary, and hopefully safer, lives. (Note: some spoilers in the plot synopses to follow)

Young-chul (Kim Jae-seong), age 12, and his brother Young-mun (Lee Gyeong-tae), six, live with their father and mother in company housing at a salt farm where Father works. Young-chul's Mother (Jeong Yeong-suk, Maundy Thursday) is pregnant, and earns money by digging for oysters in the low-tide mud. Father (Park Geun-hyeong, Marrying the Mafia) suffered a head injury in an accident a year or so back, and has spells of terror and violence whenever a jet flies overhead. The newly completed Busan airport is nearby, so this happens too often. After Mother gives birth to yet another brother, Cheol-ho (Kim Hyeon-seong), she takes on Father's job at the salt farm so the family can stay in the company housing, but one day she collapses and dies. Honoring her dying command, Young-chul takes charge of the family. Carrying Cheol-ho on his back, he digs for oysters, tries to keep up with school, and works at the salt farm. Father gets progressively worse, and finally is sent to a mental hospital. The neighbors help out at first, but soon convince themselves that the boys would be better off sent away. Determined to stay together, the boys resist successfully. Just as the movie ends, Young-chul tells us that his diary was published; President Park Jeong-hee read it and decreed that the boys should be helped.

What makes A World Without Mom interesting is its generally low-key, almost social-realist tone. It dwells more on the experiences and pastimes of Korean children in the early 1970s and downplays the great melodramatic crises. Young-chul feels the weight of his responsibilities, but Young-mun is a cheerful and aggressive ringleader, playing Doctor with a neighbor girl and leading battles with other boys. Except for Father, who must scream and rave and generally behave like a Korean Renfield, director Lee Won-se (A Small Ball Shot by a Dwarf) got natural, appealing performances from the actors. The only problem is that, as was normal in those days, the characters' voices were dubbed by different actors, and the boys were voiced by adult women, not very convincingly. Young-chul especially sounds like a cartoon character, not a twelve-year-old of either sex.

A World Without Mom was popular enough to spawn two sequels and numerous imitations; the first sequel has been released on DVD along with the original. In A World Without Mom 2 (1978), Young-chul takes care of his brothers while letters pour in from fans of his published diary. Suddenly Father is released from the hospital, and the neighbors find a miraculously suitable woman for him to marry. The new Mother (Yun Mi-ra) is kind, patient, and undemanding, but Young-mun resents her arrival, and runs away from home. In the end everything turns out okay. The most interesting thing here is the handfuls of letters that Young-chul receives from other Korean children, but the filmmakers weren't interested in exploring how this fame affected Young-chul's life. Instead they made a conventional family melodrama, with puppy love, lost children on stormy nights and tearful reconciliations.

The filmmakers wrung out one more sequel, subtitled Festival of Chicks, in 1978. According to a plot summary on IMDB.com, in the third film Young-mun takes up baseball, but loses interest, so Young-chul must use all his big-brother powers to persuade him not to quit. No wonder it was the final film! But the original is well worth watching.      (Duncan Mitchel)

A World Without Mom ("Eomma eomneun haneul arae"). Directed by Lee Won-se. Screenplay by Kim Mun-yeop. Starring Kim Jae-seong, Lee Gyeong-tae, Kim Hyeon-seong, Park Geun-hyeong, Jeong Yeong-suk, Ko Young-gap, Park Ju-hui. Cinematography by Park Seung-bae. Produced by Han Jin Enterprises. 120 min, 35mm, color. Released on June 23, 1977.

Review by Adam Hartzell

    Beautiful Sunday

Jin Kwang-kyo's debut Beautiful Sunday tells two stories to tell one story. First we meet our police detective Kang (Park Yong-woo) an obviously troubled man, who has found himself in the predicament of sacrificing ethics in order to finagle the extra cash he needs to pay for his wife's rising medical bills. He reduces charges and siphons off evidence in collusion with crime syndicates for a price, financial and moral. We meet him at a time when he seems to have become aware that the excruciatingly existential price is no longer worth the financial gain. Reassigned to the case of a serial rapist, we learn that his base moral crisis has taken a toll on his body in the forms of alcoholism and insomnia.

The other story nestled in is the possible subject in the serial rape case. A young, handsome law student named Min-woo (Namgung Min – who played the film director in A Dirty Carnival) appears to suffer from a debilitating awkwardness around people. We discover that he is obsessed with a woman named Su-yeon (Min Ji-hye) in his neighborhood, a woman he eventually rapes. A few years following that incident, he meets up with her again. Able to hide his identity as the perpetrator of his horrible violation of her, he eventually schemes -- even though his character might be oblivious to this fact, he is in fact conniving -- her into trusting him to the point where she agrees to marry him.

This is not an easy film to watch due to its content. But as a debut, Beautiful Sunday shows tremendous promise, particularly demonstrated in Min-woo’s storyline. Jin maneuvers the camera around Min-woo and his victim to stimulate disturbance in the audience. This is not a 'love at first sight' point of view. There is clearly something wrong with Min-woo's interest. His surveillance is not innocent in a late-bloomer-at-love kind of way, where such ineptness would be endearing. His tactics hint early on as those of a stalker. And it is Jin's choice to hint as opposed to bludgeon, that is so powerful here. When Min-woo finally announces himself to Su-yeon, we are as frightened as she is. Equally adept at arousing discomfort is the dialogue, at least as it is translated into English, demonstrating Min-woo's asocial leanings. One visit to the bookstore at which his former-victim/future-wife works is to make copies because his "office is down", that is, the copier at his office is down. An earlier visit had him telling Su-yeon – 'telling' in that Min-woo revealed a great deal about the unstable mind steeped inside, 'If you haven’t done it yet, we can do it'. When asked for clarification, he claims the ambiguous antecedent is 'dinner'. All this leads up to the horrifying reveal we experience later. And continuing with this subtlety, Director Jin reveals his skills as a director by making this plot reveal truly terrifying without the assistance of violent graphics. Director Jin merely works from the violent memories he's placed in his audience and the unsuspecting character.

There's a 'twist' involved in the plot that I won't go into, but most will be able to pick up on it early within the film. Emotions of guilt and responsibility abound in our characters and our sympathies are clearly complicated by the narrative. Detective Kang and Min-woo are not likeable characters, but they are not cliched in their unlike-ability. I can’t quite place why Beautiful Sunday is titled as it is. (And the Korean title provides no illumination since it's merely a Hangul phoneticization, or as I like to say, the Hangulification, of the English title.) And I’m sure once I’ve finally gotten a chance to see more 2007 films, I won’t be able to place it amongst the best. But Beautiful Sunday has encouraged me to watch out for Jin Kwang-kyo in the future.       (Adam Hartzell)

 

Review by Kyu Hyun  Kim

    Muoi: Legend of a Portrait

Yun-hee (Jo An, Wishing Stairs), a writer who got her big break with a viciously gossipy "novel" about her party crowd, has run out of ideas. She is contacted by Seo-yeon (Cha Ye-ryun, Bloody Aria, Voice), her old friend now living in Viet Nam, and is told of a local piece of folklore involving a cursed portrait of a woman named Muoi (Anh Thu). Intrigued and more than a little desperate, Yoon-hee decides to stay with Seo-yeon to further research the story. What she does not realize is that there are creepy parallels between Muoi's tragic life and that of a certain friend of hers. Vengeance is best served cold, like a spring roll wrapped around mint leaves and fresh shrimp, no?

Finally Koreans, now comfortably ensconced in one of the most consumerist nations in the world, not to mention Asia, are getting themselves into making the kind of "exotic" horror-fantasy films that the British used to make about their old colonies: in this case, the exotic foreign land of choice is Viet Nam, presented as a luscious tropical paradise, overflowing with beautiful young women dressed in the magnificently figure-flattering ao dai, where a barely-out-of-her-teens Korean heiress can keep a spacious, majestic villa all to herself. Director Kim Tae-kyung, responsible for Ryung aka Ghost (2004), one of the lamest Korean horror films in recent memory, is thankfully not so all-thumbs with Muoi, which is not to say that the latter does not display that unrefined, beat-the-audience's-head with-a-blunt-object sensibility of his. Some of the gags in the movie are so artlessly done they become unintentionally hilarious or simply just annoying (How about the wallpaper that peels off with a noisome bubbling sound? When the Coen Brothers used the trick in Barton Fink, it was at least intentionally funny. Or the strangling-by-silk-scarf-caught-in-a-bike-wheel death that may or may not be a reference to Isadora Duncan?). The best part of the movie is actually the substantial flashback sequences involving Muoi's back-story, which provides the necessary frisson as well as a sense of emotional involvement, missing in the sections set in present day.

Jo An and Cha Ye-ryeon try gamely to muddle through the crudely concocted screenplay by the director and Ji Jak (Soo). Jo An is very attractive in a tomboy-ish get-up and as usual emotes with great enthusiasm and conviction. Unfortunately, her character is obviously engineered to placate internet-obsessed young girls among the viewing demographic and is about as intelligent or perceptive as a plastic bottle of Corn Whisker Tea. You certainly don't buy that she is a professional writer who gets paid for her scribbles, but then again, would you buy that from any among Korea's "internet novelists?" Ah, it must be a cultural thing: let's leave it at that. Cha Ye-ryeon comes off much better, looking decidedly otherworldly, with her cat-who-ate-your-canary-and-goldfish-too smile and preternaturally thin limbs swathed in the white ao dai, even though she is saddled with reams and reams of utterly boring expository dialogue. The Viet Namese actress Anh Thu and newcomer Hong So-hee (My Friend & His Wife) also leave strong impressions in their generally underdeveloped roles.

Muoi is a serviceable horror film with two or three effective jolts, but the real reason for any viewer to watch it to the finish is to gawk at its two incredibly beautiful lead actresses. Don't expect anything like a thoughtful, self-reflexive take on the (potentially ironic) position of Koreans now exploiting Viet Nam as an exotic land of the ghosts with unrequited love.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

LunchBox has really gotten back into full swing here in our Portland office.  Matthew Dear and his Big Hands played to a nice full house.  The show started a little later than normal because tour busses and rain on the freeway don’t always go hand in hand.  Even with that one hitch we still got [...]

2007.10.03:  This and that   First of all, I think I owe readers some sort of apology or explanation for the glacial pace at which the site has been updated this year. (Alas, I think the glaciers are moving faster than I am these days) I've always tended to make progress on this site in spurts, whenever some free time appears, but this has been a particularly unforgiving year, work-wise (despite the fact I'm no longer doing subtitles). I've also been dealing with serious carpal tunnel issues in my arm for over a year now, which has affected the site in particular because I've had to cut down on the amount of typing I do. It's somewhat better now, but dealing with this has been an extremely frustrating experience... Anyway, I don't want to turn this into a litany of excuses, but I wanted to say please bear with me, and I hope to turn things around soon. In the meantime, some random comments:

* I'm writing this on the train, on my way down to the 12th Pusan International Film Festival. As more and more film festivals appear in Korea these days, it's becoming increasingly difficult for these events to draw large crowds. In the past couple months I've attended both the 1st Cinema Digital Seoul (CinDi) festival and the 8th Seoul International Film Festival, but the organizers of both events were really disheartened by the low turnout. PIFF, however, seems to have avoided that fate: even before the start of the event, more than 118,000 tickets have been sold, compared to 84,000 at the same time last year. This is really encouraging, though I'm not sure the reason for this sudden jump. In fact, most people I've talked to have seemed unimpressed with the program compared to previous years. A new, much more convenient ticket system has been put in place this year -- could this explain it? As for the Korean films screening at the festival, it looks like very small-scale, independent films will be in the spotlight this year. Most of these directors will be completely unknown to the international critics and programmers flying in to Busan, for example An Seul-ki who directed Five is Too Many a couple years ago, or Kim Dong-hyun who made A Shark. We'll see how it turns out -- I'm not expecting there to be as many outstanding new Korean films as there were last year, but if there are two or three discoveries, then PIFF can probably count it as a success. Unfortunately, a lot of the more interesting recent commercial films such as Epitaph, Wide Awake and Shadows in the Palace are missing from the program, even though they found room for movies like Hwang Jin Yi (yawn) and Paradise Murdered (shrug). As for me, Variety will once again be publishing PIFF festival dailies, so I'll be hard at work and probably won't get the chance to watch more than two or three films (sob).

* I've just recently returned from a trip abroad, first to my sister's wedding in Kentucky and then to the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain for a few days. From this year I've been working as a delegate (advisor) for San Sebastian, and I have to say it is really a beautiful city and a great event. There were three Korean films there this year: Shadows in the Palace (pictured) in the main competition, Epitaph in a new directors sidebar, and The Show Must Go On in a section for works that have screened at other festivals. All three films were received fairly well, though some gruesome scenes of fingernail-ripping in Shadows in the Palace sent numerous viewers heading for the exits. It also sort of confirmed for me that well-made, creative mainstream Korean films occupy an unusual place in the established Western festivals that traditionally celebrate arthouse cinema. Some critics, especially younger ones, are very enthusiastic about them, while others are turned off by the genre elements. The films are certainly viewed in a different manner than they are in Korea...

* No major hit films at this year's Chuseok holiday in September, although Kwak Kyung-taek's Love seems to be doing pretty well. (I haven't seen it yet, but will be watching it soon) My personal favorite among the bunch was Lee Joon-ik's The Happy Life (pictured). I admit that at first I viewed the success of King and the Clown as sort of a fluke, but after watching Radio Star and then this film, I've become sold on director Lee. His strong storytelling skills allow him to turn completely ordinary, predictable material into really engaging films. The Happy Life centers around three middle aged men who decide to revive the rock band of their youth. Sound unappealing? -- Give the film a chance. His next project will star the highly appealing actress Soo Ae in a story about a young woman who travels to Vietnam during the war in the 1970s as a singer, in an effort to meet up with her husband. The producer tells me this will be something unique, "war seen through a woman's eyes". Shooting will start later this year.

* Lastly, I don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but my second child is due to be born later this month. The doctor says it's another boy -- oh my! Jamie's looking forward to having a younger brother.

Review by Tom Giammarco

    HERs

Some films just lend themselves to hours of discussion after watching them. Films like David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, Vera Chytilova's Sedmikrasky or David Lynch's Eraserhead can continue to captivate you for hours or days after viewing while you try to sort through what you just saw. To this list, I would like to add HERs.

That is not to say that HERs is in any way as surreal as the above-mentioned films, but it will lead to long conversations with friends about the most basic of questions... "Who was this story about?" The enjoyable confusion regarding the answer to this question was exactly what director Kim Jeong-joong was hoping to achieve as reflected in the title of this movie. Is this story about one woman named 'Gina' at various decades in her life, or is this the story of four different women with similar destinies and unfulfilled dreams?

The film is divided into three distinct chapters taking place in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and a remote village in Alaska with an opening and closing scene in the countryside of Korea. The Gina(s) that we meet are each filled with hopes of impossible dreams and with a quirky love of ice cream. The first Gina that we spend any amount of time with is Gina Los Angeles (Kim Hye-na) whose naivety and lack of English have led her into a hard life of abuse and sex, but still continues to have great expectations in this new land of opportunity she finds herself in. The fact that her dreams are unrealistic is represented by her hope to witness coconuts growing on the palm trees of LA--even after she is told that they are the wrong kind of trees. When we first meet her, she seems to be wandering aimlessly and innocently around the dark city streets and we get the impression that she has just arrived in the country. That impression is destroyed when her ex-boyfriend, an LA gang boss (Tyler Tuione), puts a hit on her for running away from him. He contracts a shady Korean-American man named Lucas (Will Yun Lee) to locate her. Lucas does so with relative ease, but he finds himself strangely attracted to this unusual young woman whose experiences have not destroyed her hope in finding true love.

Gina Las Vegas, or a thirty-something year old Gina (Elizabeth Weisbaum), is much more hardened but still holds onto some impossible dreams. The fantasy element of her dreams is shown in how she waters her long-dead roses with the most unusual liquids in the hope of restoring them to life. She also, supposedly, longs to be a fashion designer but we never see her working towards that end. Instead, she earns her money as a prostitute. She is hostile to anyone and everyone she encounters but this seems only to be a defense mechanism against her own shame and self-loathing. We know she is ashamed of herself when she refuses to meet a man, called only 'K' (Karl Yune), who professes to have fallen in love with her. He, however, knows her only as a student of fashion and not for what she really is.

It would be equally fascinating to watch a movie about the character of K as it is to watch Gina struggle through her life. K is seemed to be full of dreams but in his case he is clearly on the verge of abandoning them and the torment of his life is causing his character to change in a direction he does not want. K wanted to be an artist but has nearly given that dream up due to a lack of confidence in his old work. He is a romantic, but disappointment in love has been turning him bitter and his encounter with Gina may have been the final straw. What is most interesting is that he professes to be in love with Gina, waiting hours for her to show up, but when they finally meet he does not know who she is, simply assuming that she is one of the many prostitutes that work in Las Vegas.

Gina Alaska (Susie Park) is a woman in her forties who has traveled as far north as she could in the hopes of seeing the Aurora Borealis. She seems to be doing this for self-validation as she claims the aurora will only appear to those who are pure. We know for a fact that the alcoholic woman staggering through the snow is anything but pure as she posts her business card depicting a beautiful, half-naked woman all over town--including on the door of the church. She comes to the bitter conclusion that the days of selling her body are over when one client asks where the hot, Asian woman is upon meeting her. However, what she also fails to realize is that her would-be client (Chris Devlin) appears to really care about her and wants to be her friend and viewers will quickly come to the see that what he is offering could be more as the tattoo he on has on his arm is exactly the same as one Gina Los Angeles saw on a man she expected to be her soulmate.

HERs may not be for everyone. It is intentionally full of stereotypes and some of the most non-politically correct statements come out of the most surprising places. However, it is also a movie of lost souls and broken dreams that will leave you with a lasting impression.      (Tom Giammarco)

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim.  (Note that this film has been retitled from "The Cut" to "Cadaver")

    Cadaver

Seon-hwa (Ha Ji-min, Swallow, Daejanggeum) is a new student at an elite medical school. Along with a typical bunch of slasher-flick's-potential-victim cast members, including Ki-beom the Boyfriend (O Tae-gyung), the Nerd (Soy), the Fatso (Moon Won-ju), the Slut (Chae Yun-seo) and the Weirdo (On Joo-wan), she is initiated into a harrowing dissection class, overseen by arrogant hard-butt Dr. Han (Jo Min-ki), nicknamed the Engineer. She notices an attractive cadaver with a rose tattoo on her breast, but thinks little of it, until her classmates begin to be murdered one by one. Apparently the perp is highly skilled in surgical techniques (the victims are discovered with hearts removed). Soon it is uncovered that Seon-hwa's friends are sharing a nightmare involving a really ticked-off-looking one-eyed surgeon. Convinced that the dead woman with the rose tattoo has something to do with supernatural goings-on, Seon-hwa and Ki-beom start an investigation to uncover her identity.

 Cadaver, scripted by Jeon Sun-wook (Vampire Cop Ricky), and adapted and directed by Son Tae-woong (best known as the co-screenwriter for Bong Joon-ho's Barking Dogs Never Bite), is a fairly ambitious horror film that traverses several sub-genres: medical thriller, slasher film, ghostly horror and even a bit of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-like psychological creep-out. Son demonstrates directorial sensibilities attuned to visual flair and economical presentation of character traits via sharp dialogue. As per recent Korean genre films, technical aspects are pretty impressive. Special makeup on the actors playing cadavers are not grossly overdone, and meticulous replicas of dissected bodies are sufficiently realistic, although not as graphic as in, say, Anatomie (2000). There are a few nimble and imaginative sequences, including the long take with swishing camera movement that captures the outbreak of psychological panic in the med school dorm, capped by an explosive fit suffered by one character, and Seon-hwa facing a dream-vision of the mysterious cadaver in broad daylight.

Unfortunately, Cadaver crashes and burns in the last third, never recovering from a "plot twist" revelation that establishes a blood relation between two seemingly antagonistic characters. The story performs several gymnastic feats of bodily contortion, until it shakes the audience's emotional investment loose like a medicated mutt would do with fleas. Yeah, we do find out what the ghost's slow gesticulations are supposed to mean, or who the heck that one-eyed surgeon is, if we are patient enough: I seriously doubt anybody would care by that point. The film's thin narrative simply cannot sustain all the things-go-bump-in-the-night stuff that also must double as clues for the viewers to piece together the "mystery" plot, which does not make any sense anyway, except on a literary-symbolic level. (To claim Cadaver has plot holes is like saying a velociraptor has really big toenails) The result is a movie that succeeds neither as a brainless spook show nor as a brain-teasing thriller. (It might have worked frankly better as a remake-slash-variant of Dr. Caligari, completely dispensing with any attempt to "rationally" explain why certain things happen to whom)

Like Antarctic Journal, (2005) another misfire with a clearly talented director at the helm, Cadaver leaves the viewers in the dust, so busy trying to spin its yarn that wrapping itself up into an inert cocoon by the last reel.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

The Shout Out Louds will be hitting the WK atrium! Come see them here, then check them out at Berbati’s Pan later that night!