Tag: Jin Seo-yeon

It’s Okay! (괜찮아 괜찮아 괜찮아!, Kim Hye-young, 2023)

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The ironic thing about the title of Kim Hye-young’s debut feature It’s Okay (괜찮아 괜찮아 괜찮아!, Gwaenchanh-a Gwaenchanh-a Gwaenchanh-a!) is that for the most part it really isn’t but the ever cheerful heroine In-young (Lee Re) manages to face her hardship and loneliness with down-to earth-practicality and good grace. It’s her infectious happiness that begins to improve the lives of those around her, many of whom have their own issues often stemming from entrenched patriarchy, classism, and a conformist culture that railroads the young into futures they may not want and will not make them happy.

At least that’s how it is for Na-ri (Chung Su-bin), the star of Il-young’s traditional dance troupe who has developed bulimia partly to adhere to contemporary codes of feminine perfection but also as a means of asserting control over her life which is otherwise micromanaged by her mother, once a dancer herself but now a wealthy housewife who uses her privilege to ensure her daughter is always centrestage. For these reasons she crassly remarks that she envies Il-young whose mother was killed in a car accident leaving her orphaned and entirely alone but in Na-ri’s eyes free and independent. 

It’s Na-ri’s mother who later refers to Il-young as a “worthless” person who does not deserve and will not have the opportunity to steal Na-ri’s spotlight even if she were good enough to seize it. The other girls in the troupe resent Il-young because her fees are paid by a scheme set up to help children of single-parent families, though technically she isn’t one anymore. They think it’s unfair she doesn’t have to pay when they do and also look down on her for being poor and an orphan when the rest of them come from wealthy backgrounds and are serious enough about traditional dance to consider going on to study it at university. Il-young isn’t a particularly good dancer nor does she put a lot of effort into it, but unlike Na-ri whose dancing is technically proficient but cold Il-young dances with a palpable sense of joy.

That might be why she catches the attention of otherwise stern choreographer Seol-ah (Jin Seo-yeon) who harbours resentment towards Na-ri’s snooty mother but lives a life that seems very repressed, tightly controlled and devoid of the kind of exuberance that comes naturally to Il-young. Her palatial apartment is cold, neutrally decorated, and spotlessly clean while, contrary to Na-ri, she forgoes the pleasures of eating subsisting entirely on green health drinks. Her decision to take in Il-young after finding her secretly living at the studio after her landlord evicted her from the home her mother had rented, may also reflect her own desire for a less constrained life and the familial warmth which seems otherwise lacking in her overly ordered existence. Gradually nibbling at the fried spam Il-young has a habit of cooking in the morning, she begins to open herself to the idea of a less regimented, happier life.

The same is true for Na-ri who is fed up with being forced to live out her mother’s vicarious dreams, literally letting her hair down and abandoning her need for control and dominance to embrace more genuine friendships with the other girls including Il-young. The lesson seems to be that there’s too much pressure placed on these young women in a society that dictates to them who and what they should be while shunning those like Il-young who are defiantly who they are and all the more cheerful for it even in the face of their hidden loneliness. Yet as Seol-ah eventually tells her, you’re the centre of wherever you are and Il-young’s life is her own to live in the way she chooses.

What emerges is a sense of female solidarity in the various ways Il-young is also parenting Seol-ah as she at first perhaps grudgingly offers her support and acceptance while taking on a maternal role that allows her to break free of the rigidity which had left her so unhappy. Told with a true sense of warmth that belies an inner melancholia, the film advocates for laughing through the tears and meeting with the world with an openhearted goodness that in itself allows others to break free of their own grief and pain and discover a happiness of their own bolstered by a sense of friendship and community rather than live their lives isolated and alone to conform to someone else’s ideal.

It’s Okay! screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Yaksha: Ruthless Operations (야차, Na Hyeon, 2022)

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“Justice is preserved by being just” according to the idealistic hero at the centre of Na Hyeon’s Yaksha: Ruthless Operations (야차, Yacha) , though he’ll eventually come round to his sometime mentor’s belief that “Justice must be preserved by any means necessary”. Any means necessary is indeed the motto of the titular hero named for the unpredictable Buddhist deity and regarded by his superiors as a dangerous maverick though as it turns out he does indeed have justice in mind even if his idea of justice might not fully align with those whom he is intended to serve. 

The failure of the regular justice system is signalled in the film’s opening as idealistic prosecutor Ji-hoon (Park Hae-soo) finds his case against a corrupt CEO falling apart because of procedural mistakes by his own rookie team. Humiliated on the courthouse steps, Ji-hoon is given a punitive transfer to the NIS where he is kept out of trouble, told to draw a salary but given very little work. He and his jaded colleague who was once known as the “bulldozer of justice” but has been ruined by this bizarre form of punishment and no longer has the will do to anything much at all mostly spend their time doing jigsaw puzzles stave off boredom. When his colleague admits there’s no more hope for him and turns down an offer of reinstatement, Ji-hoon agrees to travel to Shengyang, a hotbed of international spies in China, to find out what’s going on with a series of false reports from their agents on the ground led by maverick black ops officer Yakska. 

What he soon discovers is that he’s been dragged into some murky geopolitical shenanigans between North Korean spies, his target’s possibly corrupt team, and the Japanese who are once again up to no good trying to prevent a possible alliance between North and South believing such a union would present too much of a threat to their economic position in North East Asia. His problem is that Yaksha’s field craft does not measure up to what he regards as appropriate conduct. He engages in firefights and commits what seem to be summary executions while later threatening to torture a hostage to force her to reveal the location of their missing asset, a North Korean financial kingpin, Moon (Nam Kyung-eup), who had been acting as a double agent for the Japanese but had become disillusioned with their imperialist outlook and decided to defect to the South bringing valuable information with him. 

It has to be said that however uncountable it may be to see a Japanese spy who behaves like a gangster committing acts of torture in a well appointed lab on a Chinese woman in China, Yaksha cannot exactly claim the moral high ground having attempted to do something similar only in his filthy hideout in an abandoned mine. Ji-hoon’s dilemma is that he doesn’t know whose side, if any, Yaksha is on or if he’s after the North Korean trillions Moon had been managing rather than a hugely beneficial national asset. Exposed to this morally grey world, however, Ji-hoon’s idealist edges begin to soften as shifts towards Yaksa’s “by any means possible” philosophy while trying to stop evil Japanese spy turned lobbyist from recovering the valuable data Moon had to sell and going on to do even more nefarious deeds undermining the possibilities for reunification along with the Koreas’ economic potential. 

Somewhat uncomfortably, the film does then more or less condone torture, betrayal, and summary execution if conducted in the pursuit of “justice” even while simultaneously approving of Ji-hoon’s idealistic pursuit of the rich and powerful who continue to misuse their position and cause pain to ordinary people. It comes to something when the safest ally is a gang of human organ traffickers with whom Yaksha seems to be suspiciously familiar. Nevertheless, what Yaksha eventually asks Ji-hoon to do is to “clean things up” hinting at the duo’s complementary qualities as they pursue “justice” in both the legal and more immediate senses. Filled with some quite literally explosive action sequences along with some admittedly broad comic book antics as the guys face off against Hideki Ikeuchi’s Japanese arch villain Yaksha is certainly a good looking film if one with a dark heart beating at its centre. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Believer (독전, Lee Hae-young, 2018)

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Believer posterJohnnie To’s darkly comical tale of a weaselly meth cook with an extremely strong survival instinct and the austere policeman who can’t resist taking his bait might seem perfectly primed for a Korean remake in its innate pessimism and awkward bromance. Lee Hae-young’s Believer (독전, Dokjeon), however, merely borrows the bones of To’s Drug War while doubling down on its central conceit as reckless obsession leads to the undoing of both our heroes, each forced to confront the futility of their respective, mutually dependent quests.

Obsessed with tracking down a mysterious drug lord known only as “Mr. Lee”, narcotics cop Won-ho (Cho Jin-woong) asks a favour from an old informant only to see her murdered, leaving him only a vague clue by tracing an infinity symbol on a crumpled receipt moments before passing away. Warned off the Mr. Lee case, Won-ho finally gets a lead when an explosion at a drug lab brings scorned righthand woman Oh (Kim Sung-ryung) into his office promising to spill the beans in return for protection and immunity. Sadly, Won-ho couldn’t protect her either, but there was another unexpected survivor in the form of low level middleman Rak (Ryu Jun-yeol).

Traumatised by the death of his mother in the same explosion, Rak initially says nothing under interrogation but suddenly wakes up on learning that the lab’s dog also survived and has been rescued by the police. Unlike the “hero” of To’s film, Rak is small fry (if well connected) and is not looking at anything more than significant prison time. Rak may not be fighting for his life but he has a number of reasons for switching sides, especially once Won-ho fills him in on Mr. Lee’s backstory and long history of abrupt purges.

Despite working for the organisation, neither Oh nor Rak had ever met “Mr. Lee”. No one knows anything about them – gender, nationality, name, or location. In fact, there may not even be a Mr. Lee. Perhaps “Mr. Lee” is merely the “god” of drug dealers – an abstract idea almost given flesh but existing in a spiritual sense alone. Nevertheless, the idea of a Mr. Lee has completely captured the heart of compassionate police detective Won-ho whose all encompassing need to find him has already severely destabilised his life. After failing to protect his informant, Won-ho’s complaint against Mr. Lee is now a personal as well as professional one. Not so much out of vengeance (though there is that too), but a need to make the deaths count and his mounting losses meaningful.

Yet as another Mr. Lee contender later puts it, salvation may not be a matter of faith and if your faith has been misplaced, death may be a healing. In believing so deeply in the idea of “Mr. Lee”, Won-ho has given him form and created an idol to be worshipped through devotion. “Brian” (Cha Seung-won), a higher ranking gangster and former preacher chased out of the US for getting his congregation hooked on cocaine, has his own particular brand of faith based problems but subscribes to much the same philosophy. He may really be Mr. Lee (as may anyone), but if he isn’t he’s determined to convince himself he is in order to see himself as something more than the failed son of a chaebol dad who couldn’t hack it in the family business or in the pulpit. Brian would be happy to die as Mr. Lee rather than going on living as “himself”. Won-ho, unable to understand why kids do drugs asks his informant who explains it’s mostly because life is rubbish. Later someone says something similar to Brian, that he’d rather delude himself with the belief that he’s “someone” rather than face the emptiness.

Despite himself, and as Rak is eager to remind him, Won-ho is dependent on his informant for the pursuit of his case. Won-ho is reluctant to trust him even though Rak seems to be actively working to protect him in this extremely dangerous and largely unfamiliar world. Rak, by contrast, is aware he hasn’t won Won-ho’s faith, but assures him that’s OK because Rak trusts him. Rak does indeed seem to have the upper hand along with mysterious motivations and a fishy backstory, but Won-ho’s desperation to get close to Mr. Lee leaves him wide-open, unwilling to trust his guide but too invested to consider cutting him loose. “Belief” becomes its own drug, a transformative ritual act which gradually erodes all other needs and leaves only emptiness in their place. Won-ho can’t even remember why he started chasing Mr. Lee, but all that remains of him is the chase – a true believer suddenly bereft of a cause. Lee Hae-young takes To’s nihilistic cynicism and subverts it with a focus on the personal as both men fight self created images of their individual demons but find themselves unable to escape from their mutually assured identities.

Believer was screened as part of the 2018 BFI London Film Festival.