Tag: Gong Hyo-jin

Memento Mori (여고괴담 두번째 이야기, Kim Tae-yong & Min Kyu-dong, 1999)

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Internalised shame leads to tragic, unforeseen consequences in landmark South Korean horror Memento Mori (여고괴담 두번째 이야기, Yeogogoedam Dubeonchae Iyagi). The second in a thematic series of high school ghost stories, the film was radical for its time in its presentation of same sex romance in demonising not the love but the world that would not accept it while otherwise painting a fairly bleak picture of the educational landscape in which teachers are only ever symbols of a corrupt authority intent on enforcing oppressive patriarchal social codes.

The film’s heroine is in many ways an audience member, or at least a fairly passive observer of the ongoing drama who only later inserts herself into the narrative. Min-ah (Kim Min-sun) discovers a mysterious “diary” near the sports ground and is quickly hooked on its cryptic contents even before realising that it details a lesbian relationship between two of her classmates who were at one point “close” but have since “drifted apart”. The author, Hyo-shin (Park Ye-jin), is already considered “weird” by her classmates and does seem to have an otherworldly quality, most particularly in her tendency to speak in an uncanny manner. She is also accused of being a “lesbian” by an obnoxious fellow student laying bare the way these teens already enforce a social prejudice which oppresses them all. 

Min-ah’s friend Yeon-an (Kim Jae-in) has been fasting for the last few weeks to try and get her weight down before the school’s physical health check up, while Ji-won (Gong Hyo-jin) is similarly concerned with her chest measurement. This is an all girls school, and there is a clear preoccupation with the ability to conform to notions of conventional femininity while all of the teachers that we see aside from the school nurse are male and enforce discipline with quite shocking levels of violence. Yeon-ah and Ji-won land up in trouble for playing around with a video camera they’d brought in to record choir practice when it’s discovered by a teacher who reacts as if he thinks the girls are on some kind of whistleblowing mission. He clearly feels that his authority has been questioned, which also implies that he knows his behaviour is “wrong”, and punishes the girls for their “rebellion” against him. 

After Hyo-shin dies in an apparent suicide, it is rumoured that she may have been pregnant which would certainly explain her desire to get out of the health check. In a flashback, she suggests that she may have drifted into an inappropriate sexual relationship with a dejected teacher, Mr. Goh (Baek Jong-hak), who claims that he doesn’t get on with his “materialistic” colleagues while fed up with the vacuous teenage girls he’s supposed to be teaching. Yet Mr. Goh appears to have suffered little after Hyo-shin’s death despite being the apparent father of her unborn child, leaving only Hyo-shin’s vengeful spirit to enact some kind of justice. 

It’s Mr. Goh who did in some way disrupt the relationship between Hyo-shin and Shi-eun (Lee Young-jin) who seems to feel on some level betrayed while deepening her inner conflict as regards her sexuality. Unlike the other girls, Shi-eun presents in a slightly more masculine fashion, not least because of her athleticism, and is filled with an internalised shame about her relationship with Hyo-shin which she otherwise does not share. In the dreamlike scene which opens the film, Hyo-shin and Shi-eun are plunged into water tied at the ankle by the red string of fate which in popular mythology signifies a true romantic connection. But as they fall together, Shi-eun begins to panic and unties herself. She violently pushes Hyo-shin away who then continues to sink into the murky depths below. This act of physical rejection is repeated several times, most notably when Hyo-shin kisses Shi-eun in front of their classmates shortly after she has been struck in the face by their teacher. Shi-eun pushes her away, and thereafter ignores her before directly stating that she is “ashamed” and does not care what Hyo-shin decides to do with her life. 

It’s this rejection that the film posits as the cause of Hyo-shin’s suicide, though the romance itself is constantly overshadowed by death. Obsessed with the diary, Min-ah eats a “magic” sweet stuck inside which is described as some kind of love poison for which Hyo-shin has an antidote, only in the climax of the film it seems to be the reverse and a kind of prelude to a double suicide. In the dreamworld created by Hyo-shin’s spirit, the schoolgirls assemble for something that looks a lot like a wedding though ostensibly a birthday party in which the couple is accepted by the world around them only in reality it can never happen in part because Shi-eun herself does not permit it to. 

Directors Kim and Min hint at the feverish atmosphere with blown out whites and strange angles even before entering the menacing dreamscape of Hyo-shin’s revenge, lending a note of unsteadiness to Min-ah’s obsessive investigation of the diary that perhaps reveals something of herself even as it draws her towards a dark spiritual destiny. In any case, what it leaves behind is a deep sense of melancholy for tragedy of the teenage lovers who in the end maybe the ones haunted by the world around them.

Memento Mori screened as part of this year’s Queer East .

Trailer (English subtitles)

Family Ties (가족의 탄생, Kim Tae-yong, 2006)

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What is it that binds a “family”, bonds or blood, and do you really have a choice when it comes to being in one? Those are all questions which might have greater import in societies in which the concept of family is clearly defined and deeply entrenched, but even so the answers may be in a state of flux in the face of rapid social change which perhaps dangles the possibilities of greater personal freedom while in other ways remaining rigidly conservative. 

More literally translated as the birth of a family, Kim Tae-yong’s Family Ties (가족의 탄생, Gajokeui tansaeng) explores these changing connections through three interconnected stories, the first two occurring roughly contemporaneously and the third around a decade later. The heroine of the opening chapter, Mira (Moon So-ri), is a reserved young woman running a small cafe mostly catering to noisy teens. Originally excited to receive a phone call from her younger brother Hyung-chul (Uhm Tae-woong) whom she hasn’t seen for five years letting her know he’ll be coming home for a visit, Mira’s enthusiasm for the reunion dwindles when he turns up with a new wife, Mu-shin (Go Doo-shim), who appears to be much older than him. Mira is understandably put out. Firstly, he obviously didn’t invite her to his wedding, in fact he didn’t even bother to share the news he’d got married, and secondly it’s quite inconsiderate not to have warned her there would be an extra guest in tow especially as they’ve not met before. 

On the other hand, perhaps seeing him again merely reminds her of all the reasons they haven’t stayed in touch. In a quiet moment, Hyung-chul reveals he wants to open a shop selling traditional hanbok nearby, which is a surprise, but Mira instantly realises he’s probably come for money and repeatedly tells him she doesn’t have any. When everyone’s asleep, she makes a point of putting her bank book in a locked box inside the safe just to be sure he won’t abscond with it in the night. With Hyung-chul picking a fight with her fiancé and a random child turning up who turns out to be Mu-shin’s unwanted stepdaughter from several relationships ago, Mira’s patience begins to come to an end. She suggests that perhaps they’ve outstayed their welcome, but then evidently thinks better of it only to be let down once again by her irresponsible brother who claims he can take care of everyone, but predictably does not follow through. 

Family becomes a burden left to women to bear while acting as a safety net for men who view their role as protector yet largely can’t look after themselves. Sun-kyung (Gong Hyo-jin), the slightly younger protagonist of the second story, is frustrated by this same self sacrificing quality in her mother who has been continually deceived by useless lovers all her life including the most recent, a married man who won’t leave his wife and children. She also resents the presence of her much younger brother, still an elementary student doted on by the mother from whom she feels increasingly disconnected. Having run away from home to become a singer, Sun-kyung now has her sights set only on escaping abroad and is currently working as a guide for Japanese tourists only to end up bumping into her ex-boyfriend on a day out with his new partner. For her family is little more than a trap, her boyfriend apparently breaking up with her for being too selfish while she eventually pays a visit to the home of her mother’s lover to confront him and ask if “love” is really worth the price of sneaking around living a lie. Yet bonding with her brother and discovering what was in the mysterious suitcase her mother insisted on leaving at her apartment perhaps reconnects her with her childhood self and a more positive take on family bonds, even if that means in a sense regaining one dream only to abandon another. 

In any case, the anxieties of the first two sequences are visited in the third through the story of a young couple we first meet sitting next to each other on a train. So familiar with each other are they that we assume they are already involved, but they are in fact strangers meeting for the first time. Flashing forward a little, however, we can see their relationship is strained. Kyung-seok (Bong Tae-gyu), the young man, has inherited a sense of male insecurity, flying into jealous rages ostensibly because his girlfriend Chae-hyeon (Jung Yu-mi), is simply too nice or more to the point she’s nice to everyone and not just to him. He is frustrated by her because he feels she allows herself to be taken advantage of, often lending money to people who won’t see the need to pay her back because she’s too “nice” to bring it up. The last straw comes when he feels she’s embarrassed him by not showing up for a family dinner because she got involved in the search for a missing child. 

“When I’m with you I’m dying of loneliness” he somewhat dramatically announces as part of a breakup speech, annoyed that Chae-hyeon does not devote herself entirely to him as perhaps he expects a woman to do, but defiantly carries on being indiscriminately nice to everyone. He describes his mother as “pathetic” for having been overly attached to unreliable men, only to be corrected by his sister who reminds him that she merely had a big heart, something he’s perhaps lacking in his broody neediness. Yet through meeting Chae-hyeon’s family we get a sense of something different and new in which two women have raised a child unrelated to them by blood who came into their lives by chance as the result of a man’s irresponsible behaviour, an unnecessary throwaway reference to separate bedrooms perhaps undermining the boldly progressive introduction of Chae-hyeon’s two mothers to the extremely confused Kyung-seok. Nevertheless what we see in this last family, born as it was through a series of accidental meetings, is the first instance of a warm and loving home built on mutual support and affection rather than simply on blood or obligation. Having reclaimed the nature of family for themselves perhaps gives the women the courage and conviction to firmly close the door on those who might seek to misuse or corrupt it with their own sense of selfish entitlement, blood relation or not. 

Family Ties streamed as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Door Lock (도어락, Lee Kwon, 2018)

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Door lock poster 1Behind your own front door, you’re supposed to feel safe but the modern city conspires to ensure no space, not even the most private, can feel completely free from danger. A Korean spin on the Spanish film Sleep Tight, Lee Kwon’s Door Lock (도어락) shifts the focus from perpetrator to victim as it explores each of the many and various ways women are made to feel vulnerable in the still male dominated Korean society.

Kyung-min (Gong Hyo-jin) has more than one reason to feel anxious. A bank clerk on a temporary contract, she’s forever worrying that she’ll soon be out of a job though there is a rumour of permanent employment on the horizon if only she can keep up her efficiency at work. That might be difficult, however, because Kyung-min has not been feeling well. She wakes up groggy and goes through much of the day feeling a little out of things, though perhaps that’s just the city air. Another cause for concern is that she keeps having the eerie feeling that someone’s been in her apartment when she wasn’t there. Fully aware of all the dangers (and perhaps having had problems before), Kyung-min is concerned enough by signs of someone fiddling with her door lock to change the code every few days, and is panicked by someone furiously rattling the door late at night trying to get in.

Like any sensible person, Kyung-min calls the police but they remain unsympathetic to her fears. Knowing she’s called several times before, they write her off as nervous and hysterical or perhaps an attention seeking lonely single woman. Kyung-min, unfortunately for her, has a habit of attracting the attentions of unpleasant men like a customer at the bank, Ki-jung (Jo Bok-rae), who refuses to take no for an answer after inappropriately asking her out during a consultation about his bank account. In an angry rant, Ki-jung accuses her of leading him on, that she flirted with him on purpose to encourage him to take out additional accounting services. Kyung-min feels herself shrinking in wondering if there’s some truth in what he said, instantly blaming herself, as she recalls that the appraisals are in the offing and she wasn’t making enough sales. Her colleague told her to smile more, so maybe she did and this is what comes of it. The situation is only diffused when Kyung-min’s smartly dressed boss steps forward to place a hand on her shoulder and call security on her behalf.

The boss, nice and well mannered as he is, is perhaps another sort of problem as he too has additional interest in Kyung-min that could end up becoming an awkward workplace issue. As it turns out he becomes another sort of crisis entirely which gets Kyung-min mixed up with the police who now assume she herself is the creepy stalker with only the evidence of her previous calls to back up her claim of persistent harassment. The police remain unsympathetic, intent on pinning something on Kyung-min to close the case quickly while dismissing her fears as either lies, psychosis, or hysterical paranoia. Eventually Kyung-min and her best friend Hyo-joo (Kim Ye-won) decide they’re on their own and they’ll have to proactively protect themselves because, it seems, no one else is going to.

The men who routinely approach Kyung-min do so with frustrated entitlement. They disregard her right to refuse for no particular reason and assume it to be a slight, insisting that Kyung-min is a snob who has only rejected them for their working class occupations and relative lack of financial status. Wounded male pride is once again the most dangerous force of them all. In a precarious economic situation of her own, Kyung-min is left feeling as if nowhere is safe in an intensely chauvinistic, rabidly capitalist, and conservative society which encourages her to find fault with herself rather than the world in which she lives that forces her to feel that way. Inequalities, both economic and sexual, are driving violent crime but when it comes down to it the powers that be are relatively uninterested in the fears of single women or in doing more to create a fairer, safer society. They would rather hang fake security cameras that make you feel safe than deal with illicit spy-cams or listen seriously to women’s concerns when they say they feel afraid. A tense and harrowing thriller, Door Lock is also a frighteningly relatable exploration of the fears of modern urban living.

Door Lock was screened as part of the 2019 Udine Far East Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

A Single Rider (싱글라이더, Lee Zoo-young, 2017)

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Single Rider posterAs the old adage goes, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Having sacrificed it all for “conventional success”, an emotionally repressed salaryman loses everything when his company is exposed for its immoral business practices only to discover that he’s left it all too late and those he meant to keep close have begun to draw away from him. Quietly contemplative, Lee Zoo-young’s debut A Single Rider (싱글라이더) is a gentle meditation on the way life can get away from you. Brainwashed into the salaryman dream, our financier “hero” allows himself to be swept along by the confidence of his superiors, taking friends and family with him, when he knows deep down that if something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. Sometimes, it really is just too late, and then sometimes, tragically, it isn’t but you miss your chance anyway.

Kang Jae-hoon (Lee Byung-hun) is a broker at a securities company. Buttoned-down and near silent, he cuts a geeky if reassuringly dull figure but there’s a storm brewing under his calm exterior. His top rated company is in a lot of trouble. They’ve all been breaking the rules, and now they’re about to go under taking the savings of hundreds of ordinary, innocent people with them – people that Kang personally assured that their money would be safe because the company would never declare bankruptcy. Not quite as morally bankrupt as he seems, Kang has been depressed for some time and is on some pretty heavy duty medication. Sending what looks eerily like a suicide note to his bosses, Kang appears to rethink. He sent his wife and son to Australia to “upgrade” them through adding English functionality but hasn’t exactly paid much attention to them since. Searching for the address of the house where they live on Google Maps, he spots them captured together outside and makes an abrupt decision. Before he knows it, he’s bought a plane ticket for Sydney, heading straight to the airport with no luggage and leaving his phone behind so his boss can’t bother him.

Far from a joyful reunion, however, what Kang finds is a visual guide to all the ways he has been erased from the lives of his family. Though Kang’s wife Soo-jin (Gong Hyo-jin) and son Jin-woo (Yang Yoo-jin) have been in Australia for a couple of years, Kang does not appear to have visited before and has trouble finding the house. When he eventually locates it, he knocks at the door and gets no answer, only to find his wife laughing and joking with a neighbour – apparently the father of a friend of Jin-woo’s. Unable to bring himself to knock again, or even to find a call box and explain, Kang begins “haunting” his family, creeping around the house while they’re out, spotting pictures of the Australian neighbour, Chris (Jack Campbell), everywhere and none at all of him.

Watching them from afar, Kang is forced to reevaluate his choices. The smallest details trigger memories of his life in Korea – a flapping kitchen door left ajar when his wife had insisted on a deadlock in Seoul because she felt so afraid with him gone so often even though they lived in an upscale high-rise with an electronic entry pad, the violin she gave up for him but now apparently has taken back up, the papers on the kitchen table which imply she wants to stay rather than go “home”. Like many men who work away from their families, Kang forgot that time was passing for them too and assumed they would be waiting for him like toys put away in a box, sleeping until he’s ready to wake them. Now he wonders how close she really is to Chris, if she wants to stay for him, if she’s grown away from her husband, or simply enjoys the wide open breeziness of their spacious Sydney home with its comparatively relaxed rhythms and friendly laid-back way of life. The only thing he can be sure of is that he doesn’t seem to belong in this house anymore and this is very much not his world.

Then again perhaps Australia is not all good – Kang hates the way everyone seems to call his wife “Sue” to make her foreign name easier to remember. He runs into something similar with a young girl he noticed at the station whose name is “Ji-na” (Ahn So-hee) but everyone in Australia seems to call “Gina”. Ji-na’s problems turn out to be bigger than a misremembered name. Despite his obvious familiarity with financial scams, Kang does nothing when he overhears Ji-na on the phone to some dodgy people who want to do a “personal currency exchange”. He doesn’t see them convince her to get in their car, but does catch sight of her coming back the same way later limping and bloody having been deprived of the money she’d carefully been saving up while her labour was exploited as she lingered on after her visa had expired (which is why she can’t go to the police, as her abusers are well aware). Ji-na, like him, made a series of bad decisions though perhaps for “better” reasons and has paid dearly for her mistakes.

To be fair, Kang thought he was making his decisions for good reasons – he convinced himself he was working to provide for his family, even sending them away “for their benefit”, but now he regrets it. He regrets everything – his workaholic lifestyle, the way he allowed his principles to be compromised in pursuit of “success”, the way he bought his swanky Seoul apartment and a middle-class suburban home in Australia through defrauding people who trusted him, and the way he lost his family through a misplaced desire to “better” them rather than simply allowing them to be happy. He thinks it’s too late, that he’s ruined himself and that his family have already moved on. He may be wrong, but he won’t find out by snooping around the house and following Chris about all day to figure out how close he is to his wife.

Kang’s tragedy is that he made a series of bad decisions in which the last was the worst and the most sad. Lee Byung-hun invests Kang with an air of utter defeat, as if the air itself were crushing him while he remains unable to reconcile himself to his new circumstances or bring himself to make contact with his family. A final revelation (or perhaps confirmation of an obvious fact) makes plain why exactly it is that he seems to wander invisibly through the city streets, using public transport but miraculously disappearing from one place to appear in another as if in a trance. Kang’s only option is, perhaps, to learn to be glad that his wife and son finally have a chance to be happy even if it’s without him and be grateful that his son has found another man who’d run until his feet were sore just to keep him safe. Sometimes it really is just too late, but, tragically, sometimes you accept defeat too early when what you thought you’d lost is already on its way back to you only you’ve already given up, not on it, but on yourself.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Missing (미씽: 사라진 여자, E Oni, 2016)

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missing posterSince ancient times drama has had a preoccupation with motherhood and a need to point fingers at those who aren’t measuring up to social expectation. E Oni’s Missing plays out like a Caucasian Chalk Circle for our times as a privileged woman finds herself in difficult circumstances only to have her precious daughter swept away from her just as it looked as if she would be lost through a series of social disadvantages. Missing is partly a story of motherhood, but also of women and the various ways they find themselves consistently misused, disbelieved, and betrayed. The two women at the centre of the storm, desperate mother Ji-sun (Uhm Ji-won) and her mysterious Chinese nanny Han-mae (Gong Hyo-jin) are both in their own ways tragic figures caught in one frantic moment as a choice is made on each of their behalves which will have terrible, unforeseen and irreversible consequences.

Ji-sun is a busy woman. Recently divorced from her philandering doctor husband, Ji-sun is in the middle of a nasty custody battle over her daughter, Da-eun, which she has technically already lost though refuses to concede. Seeing as Ji-sun is barely ever at home (and when she is, she’s often still working), Chinese nanny, Han-mae is on hand to help her out. Han-mae’s Korean is imperfect, but she’s good with Da-eun and seems to have the knack for calming both the little one and her mum.

Other than the custody battle heating up as Ji-sun’s mother-in-law is intent on getting her grand-daughter away from her son’s awful former wife, Ji-sun’s life was functioning pretty well, all things considered. When she comes home one day and realises Han-mae and Da-eun aren’t around she’s a little put out but assumes they’re just delayed, have stopped off with friends, or are off somewhere having a lovely time without her. When they haven’t comeback by nightfall Ji-sun starts to worry.

Missing does its best not to judge either of the women. Though there is the subtle criticism of Ji-sun’s parental absenteeism, it’s largely manifested through her own feelings of guilt and fear as she’s placed in the difficult position of unexpected, middle-aged single parenthood. Divorced from her cold-hearted, selfish, lothario of a husband, Ji-sun would have needed to get a high paying job and maintain a middle class lifestyle to have any hope of keeping her daughter though the need to maintain both of those things would necessarily mean that she won’t be able to spend a lot of time with her child. Torn between the need to prove she can support herself alone and the need to play a fuller role in her daughter’s life, Ji-sun is understanably squeezed from both ends and left with little choice about any of it.

The problems both she and Han-mae face are those of an inherently sexist and intolerant society which forces them to prove themselves as women and judges them harshly when it believes they’ve deviated from the expected course. Ji-sun’s bosses make overtly sexist comments towards her, exclaiming that this is why they “don’t like employing mothers”, the police don’t want to believe her kidnap story because she’s just another hysterical woman, and her ex-husband knows he can take their daughter simply because he’s a man with a good job and a ready home.

Han-mae’s life has been darker and crueller, though hers is a greater struggle as she finds herself in an even lower status through being non-Korean and having poor language skills. Language skills are something she’s actively been denied in order to keep her from trying to escape a life of serfdom but in any case Han-mae’s prospects are not good. Ji-sun’s investigations take her to some very dark places as she searches for her child and begins to understand the reasons why she was taken. As a mother, as woman, and as a human being it is impossible to not to understand why Han-mae’s story ends the way it does, but it’s also impossible to not acknowledge a degree of unwittingly complicity in her ongoing suffering.

The last scene brings us unwelcomely back to that early debate surrounding the true mother and the unbreakable bond between a parent and a child, solving a complex problem neatly and smoothing it over with the gloss of emotion. Early on in the courtroom, Ji-sun says she’d do whatever it it took to keep her daughter, even run away with her if she had to. Later she says so again to a shady guy in a police cell who has more idea of what “anything” might mean, but Ji-sun was already doing quite a lot for Da-eun in running herself ragged just for the right to be near her. Neither Ji-sun or Han-mae were in any way at fault in the series of events which brought them to this point, a decision was made for them which was to have terrible, irreversible consequences. The two women are victims of the same oppressive social codes, but life is very different for each of them and if Ji-sun had been guilty of anything at all it was a blinkered way of living in which women like Han-mae are a barely visible presence except when needed to fulfil their allotted role.

Reviewed as part of a series of teaser screenings for the London Korean Film Festival 2017 the next of which, Queen of Walking, takes place at Regent Street Cinema on 22nd May 2017 at 7.30pm.

Original trailer (English subtitles)