Tag: Ko Bong-soo

Güle-Güle (귤레귤레, Ko Bong-soo, 2024)

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A man and woman saddled with problematic companions find themselves pushed into a space of introspection while on an inescapable Turkish holiday in Ko Bong-soo’s sophisticated comedy, Güle-Güle (귤레귤레). Each of them is perhaps burdened with regrets and wistful for what might have been but for opposing reasons, he facing the realisation that he often runs away from his problems and she that despite her sharp tongue and haughty attitude she lacks the courage to break with a situation that obviously isn’t working and become fully independent.

Dae-sik is there with his bumbling middle-manger boss Won-chang, a nepotism hire who repeatedly calls him a moron and blames him for his mistakes. Jung-hwa, meanwhile, is with her (ex?) husband Byung-sun who continually embarrasses her with his crass attempts to haggle the price down for anything and everything as means of asserting his masculinity through winning a price war. Byung-sun’s drinking and the problematic behaviour that arises from it had evidently strained their relationship with Byung-sun pledging to abstain from alcohol only to immediately break that promise claiming that he assumed drinking with Jung-hwa wouldn’t count. The issues Dae-sik and Jung-hwa face are in some ways the same in dealing with partners that attempt to dominate and overrule them without ever considering what they might actually want. Dae-sik hadn’t even planned on taking a holiday but assumed they’d be heading back to Korea right after closing the deal only to be browbeaten by Won-chang into extending their stay.

Jung-hwa isn’t sure why they’re in Turkey either, while the middle-aged woman and her daughters who are also on their tour drink in all the drama alternately fascinated and irritated that Byung-sun in particular is messing up their holiday. From the way he skirts around her, it seems that Dae-sik and Jung-hwa may have met before or have some unspoken history with each other. They are each dealing with past regrets and the frustrated dreams of the youth even if in differing ways. Dae-sik once had a promising future as a champion snowboarder but gave it up because he needed a paying job to contribute to his father’s medical fees. After a heart-to-heart with Jung-hwa he’s forced to ask himself if in reality he gave up in fear of it not working out and his father’s illness was just a convenient excuse not to have to risk failure. 

Jung-hwa, meanwhile, is irritated to learn that in college her fellow students nicknamed her “the viper” because of her sharp tongue and poisonous looks. She admits that she often says things thoughtlessly and hurts people by accident, pushing them away when she doesn’t mean to though this doesn’t seem to be the case with Byung-sun who she otherwise seems incapable of shaking off despite his treatment of her and repeated broken promises. Unlike Dae-sik who admits that he suppresses everything and approaches life with a fear of failure, Jung-hwa charged ahead doing what she thought she wanted and ended up divorced though with a husband that won’t leave her alone.

The holiday with its myriad challenges both interpersonal and physical, along with their impromptu meeting, affords each of them a new perspective and the clarity they each may be looking for to move on from their dissatisfying circumstances in search of greater personal happiness. Meanwhile, the other guests seem to carry on obliviously, Won-chang otherwise continuing to railroad Dae-sik into dangerous situations he feels unable to resist though perhaps he too is only reacting against his own sense of inadequacy as a nepotism hire promoted well beyond his abilities. Byung-sun’s problems seem less easy to solve and his selfish obnoxiousness is annoying not only to Jung-hwa who may finally be losing patience with him, but the entire group.

Like many similarly themed films from Korea, Ko structures the drama around a series of conversations many of which take place on a rooftop bar or walking through the streets of the city which as Dae-sik remarks become brighter and less intimidating thanks to his interactions with Jung-hwa as if his horizons were literally expanding. Yet what each of them is here to do is in a sense to say “gule gule” or goodbye to their old selves and old lives by gaining the courage to risk failure in breaking with the dissatisfying present for a hopefully more fulfilling future.

Güle-Güle screened as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Loser’s Adventure (튼튼이의 모험, Ko Bong-soo, 2018)

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Three aimless young men attempt to shake off small-town despair through the medium of high school wrestling in Ko Bong-soo’s underdog indie sports comedy Loser’s Adventure (튼튼이의 모험, Teunteuniui Moheom). Unkind as it may be to say, the young men are or at least feel themselves to be “losers”, each battling a sense of hopelessness dealing with difficult family circumstances and desperate to escape “this pathetic life” as one terms it for the comparatively brighter lights of Seoul. 

In his last year of high school, Choon-gil (Kim Choong-gil) is now the only member of the wrestling club seeing as everyone else has long since drifted away and, in fact, the coach (Ko Sung-hwan) quit ages ago to drive a bus because he enjoys being able to earn a living. Choon-gil, however, refuses to give up and has been writing daily letters to the head of the wrestling federation in the hope that he’ll somehow be able to resurrect his sporting dreams while trying to convince his conflicted friend Jin-kwon (Baek Seung-hwan) to rejoin the team. While Choon-gil lives alone with his authoritarian, alcoholic father, Jin-kwan has a mild complex about his widowed Filipina mother and her relationship with the dance-loving boss at her job in a junk shop. Hyuk-jun (Shin Min-jae), meanwhile, is a tough guy dandy living with an older brother and and sister in the absence of parents. A petty delinquent and a member of the faintly ridiculous “Black Tiger” gang, Hyuk-jun thinks wrestling’s a bit naff and is offended when his brother tries to give him an ultimatum to start studying hairdressing at his sister’s salon or pick a sport to get good at with the hope of getting a scholarship to uni. 

None of our guys is particularly bright, they know they’re unlikely to make it out through their academic prowess and probably they don’t really think wrestling is going to take them anywhere either but it’s at least something. The most sceptical of the boys, Jin-kwan reminds Choon-gil that he isn’t even very good at the sport and the only reason they took it up in the first place was because the coach semi-adopted them as the surrogate father they each needed at the time. Nevertheless, he’s determined to do whatever it takes to make his wrestling dreams come true. He is however, in for a shock as it turns out that the building holding the wrestling gym is due to be demolished in the imminent future. For some reason moved by Choon-gil’s pleas, the coach calls in a few favours and manages to get the guys listed on an upcoming tournament with the hope that if they don’t lose too badly it will show that the moribund club has promise and is worth saving. 

The irony is that as hard as he trains Choon-gil just doesn’t have much of an aptitude for the sport. He adopts the position of a mentor to new recruit Hyuk-jun, but annoyingly enough he turns out to be something of a natural, while Jin-kwon, the skinniest of the boys though also the tallest, resents the coach’s constant pressure to lose more weight. They are each, as it turns out, at the mercy of their essential character flaws, Choon-gil the hardworking dreamer who just doesn’t have it, Jin-kwan timid and struggling against himself, and Hyuk-jun talented but hotheaded and self-sabotaging in allowing his emotions to get the better of him. 

Still, they do not give up. No one really rates their chances, Choon-gil’s violent, drunken father even attempts to disown him for his love of wrestling, insisting that he become a bus driver instead for the steady paycheque, while Jin-kwan is openly mocked by his sister and Hyun-juk’s dream of starting a business in Seoul is derided both by his brother and by the Black Tigers who continue to plague him even after he tells them that wrestling’s cool after all and they’re all just a bunch of small town losers. The jury’s out on whether the guys can wrestle themselves free of their sense of impossibility and despair, not to mention their sometimes unsupportive family members, but they have perhaps at least found an outlet for their frustration not to mention a surrogate fraternity as they continue on their “loser’s journey” together looking for an exit from the disappointing small town future. 

Loser’s Adventure streams in Poland until 6th December as part of the 14th Five Flavours Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)