Tag: Jang Yoon-Ju

Ballerina (발레리나, Lee Chung-hyun, 2023)

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“You’ve blown things way out of proportion,” according to a man who still doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve dying for. But as his boss told him, though they may exploit women, sell drugs, and kill people, they have rules. Lee Chung-hyun’s pulpy action thriller Ballerina (발레리나) sees a former bodyguard go after the gangster who drugged and raped her friend with the consequence that she later took her own life.

In recent years there have been a series of real life scandals involving women being drugged in nightclubs and sexually assaulted with videos either uploaded to the internet or used as leverage for blackmail often to force women to participate in sex work. Ballerina Min-hee (Park Yu-rim), seemingly the only friend of bodyguard Ok-ju (Jeon Jong-seo), was raped by drug dealer Choi (Kim Ji-hoon) and thereafter quite literally robbed of the ability to dance. Preoccupied with her trauma, she missteps and injures herself ruining her dance career and leaving her with nothing. There is something quite poignant in the fact Choi sells the drugs in the small, fish-shaped bottles that usually house soy sauce in pre-packed sushi given that Min-hee later says that she wants to come back as a fish in her next life and live in the ultimate freedom of the sea. Dance to her seemed to be a means of finding a similar kind of free-floating freedom, but the trauma of Choi’s assault has taken that from her.

Meanwhile, the loss of Min-hee has robbed Ok-ju of something similar. On first re-connecting with her former high school friend, Ok-ju says she worked as some kind of corporate bodyguard but the organisation is clearly larger than that and involved with some additionally shady stuff that suggests her job may actually have involved some sort of spy and assassin work. In any case, it had left her feeling empty as if she were slowly dying inside. Only on meeting Min-hee does she finally start to feel alive again and has apparently left the organisation she was working for in order to live a more fulfilling life though she may not actually have achieved that just yet. There is nothing really to suggest there is anything more between the two women than friendship, though the intensity of Ok-ju’s feelings suggests there might have been.

Even so, there’s more to Ok-ju’s mission than simple revenge as she finds herself taking down the entire organisation in order to make her way towards Choi. She’s aided by another young woman dressed as a high school student (Shin Se-hwi) who looks to her for salvation, explaining that she has a plan, she’s just been waiting for someone like Ok-ju to show up and help her while the former handler Ok-ju turns to in search of support is also a woman making her mission one of female solidarity against ingrained societal misogyny. “You thought we were easy prey,” Ok-ju challenges Choi making it clear that he made a huge mistake though he continues to taunt her about Min-hee and deflect his responsibility insisting that he hasn’t done anything to warrant this kind of treatment because the abuse and trafficking of women is not something he regards as a big deal.

Ok-ju and the girl obviously feel differently. There’s something very satisfying about the way Ok-ju methodically cuts through a host of bad guys without granting them any kind of authority over her. The action sequences are often urgent and frenetic while showcasing Ok-ju’s skills and the lack of them in the male henchmen, but there’s also a fair bit of humour such as her using tins of pineapple to block knife attacks in the convenience store opener. The film indeed has its share of quirkiness such as the geriatric couple who arrive to supply Ok-ju with weapons but mainly have buckets full of revolvers that look like something out of the wild west before grabbing a flamethrower from the back, while the aesthetic also has a stylish retro feel with its purple and yellow colour palette. Pulpy in the extreme, the film’s stripped-back quality provides little background information and keeps dialogue to a minimum but more than makes up for it in its visual language and often beautiful cinematography.

Trailer (English subtitles)

I Haven’t Done Anything (좋.댓.구, Park Sang-min, 2022)

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The central irony of Park Sang-min’s meta comedy I Haven’t Done Anything (좋.댓.구, Joh.Daes.Gu) is that a man who remains defiantly silent generates much more interest than the one desperately chasing YouTube success. Adopting a “screen life” aesthetic in which much of the action is told through social media and video screens, the film asks a series of questions about our petty obsessions, online authenticity, media manipulation, and the impossibility of escaping a predetermined image as its embattled hero strives to reinvent himself by his inhabiting most famous role.

Actor Oh Tae-kyung plays a version of himself who is struggling to maintain his career as an actor having begun as a child star with his most high profile roles including that of the younger Oh Dae-su in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy. With work thin on the ground, he turns to YouTube but fails to make an impact with content that commenters describe as old hat such as “mukbang” eating videos and unboxings. It’s then that he comes up with the idea of rebranding as “Li’l Oh Dae-su”, dressing up as the protagonist of Old Boy and accepting viewers’ challenges which at one point include him taking revenge on a gang of class bullies by hitting them on the head with a plastic mallet while mimicking the famous corridor fight scene from the landmark drama.

But then, someone else has already shared their screen with us. Going under the name “Bulldog”, a viewer asks Tae-Kyung to solve the mystery behind a man who’s been standing silently in the square with a large sign reading “I Haven’t Done Anything”. Tae-kyung reasonably wonders why Bulldog didn’t just ask the guy himself, but as he explains “Picket Man” refused to answer him. Given the large amount of money Bulldog has pledged for this seemingly simple request, Tae-kyung accepts the challenge but Picket Man continues to ignore him no matter the silly stunts he pulls an attempt to break his concentration. 

Bulldog’s apparently strong desire to know the truth, willing to offer up vast sums of money just to satisfy his curiosity, hints at our own petty obsessions. After all, the cryptic quality of the sign is intriguing. What exactly is Picket Man trying to say, what didn’t he do and who says he did it? Of course, in another way, Tae-kyung also feels he hasn’t done “anything” with his life and stuck in a career morass unable to shed the image of himself as a child actor and young Dae-su in particular. Every time someone offers him another role, he worries that the baggage of his early career follows him and he’s simply not credible as a hardened gangster, for example, if everyone only sees him as the eldest of six siblings in a much loved TV drama or the little boy who grow up to become the schlubby captive Oh Dae-su. 

When the skit becomes an accidental viral hit, Tae-kyung begins to worry that perhaps he’s doing Picket Man a disservice and this kind of publicity isn’t really what he was after though it’s puzzling that he himself refuses to speak about what it is he hasn’t done. What he realises is that Picket Man is much like himself and he’s done to him what others have done to Tae-kyung in reducing him to a single image. How will anyone ever see this otherwise anonymous person as anything other than “Picket Man” now? Tae-kyung has unwittingly exploited him for his own ends and possibly ruined his life in the same way that anyone who becomes a meme is robbed of an identity. 

Then again, in this very meta tale not everything is as we think it is and we ourselves, like the YouTube commenters, are being manipulated by unseen forces. As Picket Man becomes the latest social media phenomenon, other content creators start arbitrarily jumping on the hashtag, randomly mentioning Picket Man to boost their own views while unscrupulous forces also exploit the meme potential to run scams featuring Picket Man’s image. Park carries the meta quality through to interrupting the film with fake YouTube ads and product placement from sponsors that remind us we are being sold something whether we realise it or not and that we might not even realise what the product is or who’s selling to us as the final reveal implies. Nevertheless, there’s a sense of triumph in the success of this heist that’s been pulled on us in the winning self-deprecation of dejected former child star Tae-kyung and his great master plan to shed himself of an otherwise inescapable image. 

I Haven’t Done Anything screens 5th November as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Three Sisters (세자매, Lee Seung-won, 2020)

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Lee Seung-won’s lightly humorous family drama is not an adaptation of the Chekhov play, but like its namesake does find Three Sisters (세자매, Se Jamae) trapped in the past, their lives “messed up” by the demands of living in a patriarchal society. A showcase for the three actresses at its centre, Lee’s drama works towards a gradual sisterly solidarity brokered by an awkward confrontation with the source of all their trauma but also lays bare the radiating consequences of unchecked male failure as the three women struggle to lead successful adult lives in the shadow of their childhood suffering. 

Opening with a black and white sequence in which two young girls run hand in hand quite clearly away from something bad rather than just for the joy of it, Lee switches to the present day in which oldest sister Hee-sook (Kim Sun-young) is an anxious middle-aged woman perpetually making apology for her existence, while middle sister Mi-yeon (Moon So-ri) is a cooly controlled deaconess and mother of two, and little sister Mi-ok (Jang Yoon-ju) is an unstable drunk and struggling playwright married to a moderately wealthy greengrocer with a teenage son from a previous marriage. 

They have all quite obviously chosen different methods in effort to suppress the effects of their childhood trauma, raised as we later realise in a violent home abused by their drunken father but apparently expected to put up with it out of filial piety. A half-sister Hee-sook finds herself apologising for anything and everything, filled with intense shame for her very existence. Mi-yeon by contrast has chosen order, devoutly religious she maintains high standards for her family but is filled with barely repressed rage unable it seems to express any other emotion. On realising that her professor husband (Jo Han-chul) is having a highly inappropriate affair with a much younger student she reacts with both violence and cunning, unilaterally putting a stop to his philandering while subtly letting him know that she knows and has dealt with it. Further emasculated, he tries to get some kind of normal reaction from her, hoping she will shout or hit him but she continues in the same calm and controlled fashion as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, in another echo of her father’s violence she finds herself taking out her frustrations on her young daughter, Ha-eun (Kyung Daeun), who rebels against her need for order by refusing to say grace. 

Mi-ok by contrast has in a sense chosen chaos, drinking herself into oblivion while often ringing Mi-yeon in intense confusion unable to recall a seemingly unimportant detail from their mutual past. Taking on the big sister role, Mi-yeon finds herself in a similar position with Hee-sook who apparently doesn’t remember an event that was important to her of their dining together in the same cafe they are currently visiting back when she first came to the city and Hee-sook worked in a nearby office. Later the three sisters will attempt to visit another cafe that Mi-ok had struggled to remember but will find it closed, their past perhaps locked to them but in a sense also pushing them towards a happier future as they reaffirm their sisterly bonds after living lives of highly individualised suffering. 

Failed by a feckless father, the three women find themselves at the mercy of problematic men Hee-sook apparently re-victimised as the wife of an abusive partner who returns periodically to extort money and undermine her self-esteem, while Mi-yeon attempts to evade subjugation by dominating her husband only to find him rebelling against her through an extra-marital affair. Only Mi-ok seems to have made a better marriage to a mild-mannered, patient and caring husband but is also accused of marrying him for his money while taken to task by others for her “failure” to play the part of the conventional wife and mother, her ability to do so perhaps corrupted by her traumatic childhood. “Just treat them with love” Mi-yeon ironically advises seconds after unfairly scolding her own daughter, simultaneously explaining that no one learns to be a mother, though of course in some senses they do, and that anyone can be one as long as they work at it. Nevertheless, after confronting the source of all their pain and suffering the three women manage to rediscover a sense of solidarity that perhaps allows them to reclaim their agency and live better, more fulfilling lives free of the shadow of the past. 

Three Sisters screened as part of the 2021 Osaka Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Veteran (베테랑, Ryoo Seung-wan, 2015)

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1439210220_베테랑1Review of Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran (베테랑) – first published on UK Anime Network.

One of the top Korean box office hits of 2015, Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran is a glorious throw back to the uncomplicated days of ‘80s buddy cop crime comedy thrillers. A little less than subtle in its social commentary, Veteran nevertheless takes aim at corrupt corporate culture and the second generation rich kids who inherit daddy’s company but are filled with an apathetic, bored arrogance that is mostly their own.

Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) is, as one other officer puts it, the kind of police officer who joined the force just to beat people up. He loves to fight and isn’t afraid of initiating a little “resisting arrest” action just to make things run a little more smoothly. However, when he strikes up a friendship with a put upon truck driver and his cute as a button son only to miss a crucial telephone call that eventually lands said truck driver in the hospital, Do-cheol’s sense of social justice is inflamed. After trying to join a trade union, Bae, the truck driver, is unceremoniously let go from his company. On taking his complaint directly to the head of Sin Jin Trading, play boy rich kid Tae-oh, Bae is subjected to the most cruel and humiliating “interview” of his life before apparently attempting to commit suicide after having realised the utter hopelessness of his situation. Incensed on his new friend’s behalf, Do-cheol is determined to take down these arrogant corporatists what ever the costs may be!

Veteran makes no secret of its retro roots. It even opens with a joyously fun sequence set to Blondie’s 1979 disco hit, Heart of Glass. Like those classic ‘80s movies, Veteran manages to mix in a background level of mischievous comedy which adds to the overall feeling of effortless cool that fills the film even when things look as if they might be about to take a darker turn. The action sequences are each exquisitely choreographed and filled with sight gags as the fight crazy Do-cheol turns just about any random object that appears to be close to hand into an improbable weapon.

Make no mistake about it either, this is a fight heavy film. Though Veteran has a very masculine feeling, it is to some degree evened out by the supreme Miss Bong whose high class high kicks can take out even the toughest opponents and seem to have most of her teammates looking on in awe, and the withering gaze of Do-cheol’s put upon wife who seems determined to remind him that he’s not some delinquent punk anymore but a respectable police officer with a wife and child who could benefit from a little more consideration.

Indeed, Tae-oh and his henchmen aren’t above going after policemen’s wives in an effort to get them to back off. Though this initial overture begins with an attempt at straightforward bribery (brilliantly dealt with by  Mrs. Seo who proves more than a match more the arrogant lackeys), there is a hint of future violence if the situation is not resolved. Tae-oh is a spoiled, psychopathic rich kid who lacks any kind of empathy for any other living thing and actively lives to inflict pain on others in order to breathe his own superiority. Probably he’s got issues galore following in his successful father’s footsteps and essentially having not much else to do but here he’s just an evil bastard who delights in torturing poor folk and thinks he can do whatever he likes just because he has money (and as far as the film would have it he is not wrong in that assumption).

He also loves to fight and finally meets his match in the long form finale sequence in which everything is decided in a no holds barred fist fight between maverick cop and good guy Do-cheol and irredeemable but good looking villain Tae-oh. Veteran never scores any points for subtlety and if it has any drawbacks it’s that its characterisations tend to be on the large side but what it does offer is good, old fashioned (in a good way) action comedy that has you cheering for its team of bumbling yet surprisingly decent cops from the get go. Luckily it seems Veteran already has a couple of sequels in the pipeline and if they’re anywhere near as enjoyable as the first film another new classic franchise may have just been born.

Reviewed at the first London East Asia Film Festival and the London Korean Film Festival.