Jae Hee – Windows on Worlds

Caught in limbo, a young woman finds herself torn between the desire for revenge and letting go in Lee Kwang-hoon’s supernatural drama, Ghost in Love (자귀모, Jagwimo). Is love really what Chae-byul (Kim Hee-sun) was in, or is it more the sense of humiliation that’s she’s carried into the afterlife while obsessing over her cheating ex-boyfriend who was two-timing her with the boss’ daughter? Her colleague Kantorates (Lee Sung-jae), by contrast, had a love that was purer and reminds her that though it’s painful, if she really loved him, she’d be rooting for her ex’s future happiness rather than plotting how to mess up his life.

Then again, the Korean title is “Suicide Ghost Club” and refers to the group into which Chae-byul is press-ganged after two of its grim reaper agents help her on her way having overheard her say she wanted to die because of all the romantic drama in her life. This literal purgatorial space located between heaven and hell is run like an exploitative company/cult in which the only metric of success is claiming more members. Chae-byul is warned that she doesn’t really have any choice but to join them, because otherwise she’ll become a vengeful spirit and lose all her memories, though she’s drawn to a mysterious presence known as Pale Face who does indeed become a terrifying spirit of vengeance, taking revenge primarily on the men who gang raped her while her fiancé, who later dumped her, looked on helplessly.

There is a kind of misogyny that’s most obvious in the afterlife but exists in the real world too. The film opens with a woman about to take her own life because of persistent fat shaming. She’s fat shamed by the grim reapers too and on into the afterlife, though in ghost form it’s revealed that she could be skinny if she wanted but is happiest in herself like this. Meanwhile, the grim reappears make other suggestive comments, leering over Chae-byul and remarking that a girl should have nice hips. Pale Face took her own life because of the trauma of her rape, the stigma of being a rape victim, and the betrayal of her fiancé who she says broke up with her because he thought that she was tainted. Even in the afterlife, she’s constantly washing in an attempt to make herself clean which is why she’s become so pale.

Despite being told primarily from Chae-byul’s perspective, the film more or less normalises her boyfriend’s sexist views and behaviour in which he sees nothing really wrong with two-timing each of the women. Chae-byul tries to confront him, but he tells her Hyun-ju (Kim Si-won) was only visiting “to check on her stock transactions,” and shifts the blame onto Chae-byul for being paranoid and unreasonable. He says he liked her because she was “nice and comfortable,” but now she’s changed, so if she’s going to carry on “nagging” him like this, he may as well break up with her. HIs domineering attitude and characterisation of Chae-byul as a crazy girlfriend have the desired effect of causing her to back down and apologise to him. He may be a bit pathetic and materialistic in dating the boss’ daughter solely for advancement claiming it was his only chance to get on, but his behaviour isn’t really regarded as being particularly negative while Chae-byul’s desire for vengeance is, belittled in part because it involves disrupting not only his bright future but pointlessly harming Hyun-ju too.

Then again, perhaps these attitudes are intrinsic to the latent authoritarianism of the afterlife which is governed by the mysterious “messengers” who punish the transgressions of wandering ghosts. One grumpily rants about now having to work for a living, unlike in the old days in which some people would even try to bribe them for a longer life which they don’t do anymore in an allusion to Korea’s recent democratisation. The Messengers From Hades have a serious whiff of the KCIA mercilessly pursuing those who threaten to destabilise the system and then “disappearing” them. Nevertheless, Chae-byul eventually begins to come around to Kantorates point of view while quietly falling for him even as he struggles to move on from his own lost love. He knows he can’t be with her any more, but needs to find a way to tell her to move on so that he can do the same. A strange twist of fate gives them another chance at life and at love to live without wanting to die and try to find happiness even in a world of financial anxiety where consumerist desire has replaced spiritual fulfilment.

3-iron You wouldn’t think it wise but apparently some people are so trusting that they don’t think twice about recording a new answerphone message to let potential callers know that they’ll be away for a while. On the face of things, they’re lucky that the guy who’ll be making use of this valuable information is a young drifter without a place of his own who’s willing to pay his keep by doing some household chores or fixing that random thing that’s been broken for ages but you never get round to seeing to. So what if he likes to take a selfie with your family photos before he goes, he left the place nicer than he found it and you probably won’t even know he was there.

Player 2 joins the young man (credited as Tae-suk but unnamed in the film) when he stays at an upscale mansion which turns out to be “haunted” by the still living but damaged figure of a battered wife. Tae-suk hurriedly leaves once discovered, but later thinks over his encounter with the sad seeming lady and decides to return. After an altercation with her violent husband, Sun-hwa leaves with Tae-suk and the pair sneak into various other “empty” homes together. After one particular dwelling reveals a nasty surprise the two bring themselves to the attention of the police who threaten to end their young love story before it’s hardly begun.

Like much of Kim’s work, 3-Iron (빈집, Bin-jip) is near silent and neither of the two protagonists speak one word to each other until final scene of the film. Tae-suk, in particular, seems to have an obsession with being invisible – hiding in blindspots and always making sure to tidy up after himself so well that no trace of his presence remains. Sliding into these mini universes, he seems oddly interested in their inhabitants as he gazes at their photographs and admires the decor. Despite his need to disappear, he builds connections with absent people even going so far as to take a photo with a photo of them, artificially generating some sort of kinship where there is none.

If Tae-suk is haunting the bourgeoisie, Sun-hwa is both spectre and spectee as she moves silently around her golden cage of a spacious villa like a frightened mouse locked inside the elephant house. Evidently further along the stealth game than Tae-suk has been able to progress, her discovery of him leads to a feeling of defeat. Yet, after reconsideration, he recognises a fellow lost soul and so returns to rescue her from her oppressive ogre of a husband by using his weapon of choice against him. The 3-Iron golf club is not only a symbol of the husband’s middle class pretensions, but its relative lack of wear also points to the lack of respect he reserves for his toys – even extending so far as his wife whom he also seems to regard as an “inautonomous” appendage to his image much like the golf club itself.

Kim ends the film with a caption to the effect that it’s hard to tell if the world we live in is reality or a dream. With the continued silence of the film’s protagonist, bizarre scenario of “borrowed” lives, and general surrealism, Kim creates an etherial atmosphere filled with heightened, everyday strangeness. This could be a ghost story – literally, or figuratively, as our haunted protagonists continue their visitations on the living, or a love story, or even an absurd comedy. Tae-suk and Sun-wha exchange roles, alternately comforting or rescuing one another before, perhaps, becoming one at the film’s conclusion. A strange, romantic fairytale, 3-Iron is Kim in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood though he’s careful to remind us that the world outside of this charming bubble is filled with violence, cruelty, and chaos.

3-Iron is available in the UK from Studiocanal and from Sony Pictures Classics in the US though the R3 Korean disc also includes English subtitles.

US release trailer:

Tag: Jae Hee

Ghost in Love (자귀모, Lee Kwang-hoon, 1999)

3-Iron (빈집, Kim Ki-duk, 2004)