ZEITGEIST

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)

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)