Tag: Korean

Devils (악마들, Kim Jae-hoon, 2023) [Fantasia 2023]

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A detective consumed by thoughts of vengeance suddenly wakes up in the body of the serial killer he had been hunting, but how can we truly know who is who when each is so transgressively corrupt? The pluralisation in the title of Kim Jae-hoon’s bodyswap thriller Devils (악마들, Akmadeul) is no accident as the two men become in some senses interchangeable, their identities constantly shifting and largely dependent on those ascribed to them by others. “If you closed your eyes you’d swear he was Jae-hwan,” his confused partner admits though having witnessed him brutally torture a suspect/witness by hammering nails into his thighs. 

Jae-hwan’s (Jang Dong-Yoon) rage is partly born of guilt in that he failed to properly support his previous partner, who was also his brother-in-law, during a raid on a killer’s lair during which he got his throat slit by sadistic murderer Jin-hyuk (Oh Dae-Hwan) who has been brazenly posting snuff videos on the internet while continuing to evade the police. Two years later, Jae-hwan has been partnered with reletive rookie Min-sung and is determined not to make the same mistake when they get another shot at Jin-hyuk instructing him to stay behind and let Jae-hwan lead. But during the operation Jae-hwan goes rogue, chasing Jin-hyuk on his own and going missing after diving over a ridge in the woods. A month later a car carrying both men rams into a bollard outside police HQ only when he wakes up Jin-hyuk insists on speaking only with Min-sung and claims that he is in fact Jae-hwan.

Of course, Min-sung doesn’t really believe him despite being presented with information only Jae-hwan would know but is a little more convinced on visiting his former partner and observing him behaving strangely. The problem is, how can you tell the difference between a man using extreme violence for “justice”, which in this case is actually revenge, and one who uses it for pleasure? After teaming up with him, Min-sung is called to a station and assists Jin-hyuk/Jae-hwan drag an old man to a grimy trailer in the woods where he tortures him into giving up information on his fellow criminals by hammering nails into his legs while filming his “confession” as the kind of backup evidence which can’t be used it court but still might prove useful. You could say that it’s Jin-hyuk’s subconscious poking through, but Min-sung is fairly unfazed by this unorthodox investigative tactic and his conviction that Jin-hyuk is really Jae-hwan never wavers despite seeing him commit such a violent act so naturally.

Jae-hwan too hints at similarity between himself and Jin-hyuk when he complains that as a police officer he must “fight inside the fence known as law,” while the criminals are bound by no such constraints. He completely misses that this is what ought to separate them, to make their identities distinct, but now they are more or less the same in Jae-hwan’s willingness to turn vigilante, step outside the protection of the law, and do anything it takes to catch Jin-hyuk. “You’ve got my face, take advantage of it” Jae-hwan/Jin-hyuk sneers as he sends his opposite number to catch the men that have betrayed him, while each of them is to an extent adept at playing the role assigned to them at this and any given time. 

It goes without saying that the women who were murdered in the snuff videos have been more or less forgotten, Jae-hwan’s desire to catch Jin-hyuk is born of that to avenge himself as a policeman and gain vengeance for his brother-in-law’s death. In a pointed exchange, Jin-hyuk asks Jae-hwan how he knows that he is not merely toying with him, allowing Jae-hwan to think that he’s manipulating him but secretly in control, hinting at a kind of cat and mouse game between the two to claim the identity of the chaser and the chased. Yet whichever way you look at it, Jae-hwan has overplayed his hand, releasing a “hunting dog” he can’t control with disastrous consequences for himself and others. With a distinctly B-movie sensibility, Kim plays with identity and the malleability of memory to ask if we can really be sure of who we are at any given time while suggesting that’s something Jae-hwan should have been asking himself in his relentless pursuit of his spiritual mirror.

Devils screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Phantom (유령, Lee Hae-young, 2023)

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Neatly subverting the drawing room mystery, Lee Hae-young’s intense colonial-era spy thriller Phantom (유령, Yuryeong) positions female solidarity as the roots of resistance towards oppressive militarist rule. Inspired by Mai Jia’s novel Sound of the Wind which focused on Chinese resistance towards the Japanese puppet government in Nanking, the film does indeed begin with the suggestion that one of the people in this room is a spy but soon encourages us to wonder if they all may be or some other game may be being played by an infinitely corrupt authority in the midst of a constant series of betrayals and reversals.

Opening in Kyungsung (modern day Seoul) in 1933, the film both begins and ends with a radio broadcast in Japanese reporting on the actions of “terrorist” group known as the “Shadow Corps” which has been conducting “organised crime” through a network of spies known as “Phantom”. An assassination attempt has recently been made in Shanghai on the new Korean governor and all members of the organisation are reported as dead following shootout with the Japanese authorities, though that obviously turns out not to be the case and we are quickly introduced to operative Park Cha-kyung (Lee Hanee) who works in the intelligence division of the colonial government and utilises a local cinema permanently screening Shanghai Express to communicate with her handlers. New instructions are boldly announced in plain sight through coded messages on cinema posters including one for Tod Browning’s Dracula. 

The group plan to assassinate the new governor when he visits a Japanese shrine in the city. A young woman dressed as a Shinto shrine maiden using a pistol concealed in a tray manages to wound but not kill him. She makes an escape but is shot by an unseen hand that could have come from either side. Following, Cha-kyung witnesses her death but can do nothing other than make a swift disappearance before the authorities arrive. Cha-kyung is often depicted as a shadow presence, disappearing phantom-like from the scene both there and not there as she tries to maintain her cover, but Lee also imbues her with an additional layer of repression in that the assassin, Nan-young (Esom), had been her lover. The two women meet briefly outside the cinema in an emotionally charged scene in which they can display no emotion as they must appear to be two strangers exchanging a match on the street though it’s clear that something much deeper is passing between them. 

The exchange of cigarettes itself becomes repeated motif standing in for deepening intimacy in an atmosphere of intense mistrust. The box of matches that Cha-kyung had given to Nan-young as a parting gift and means of buying a few seconds more, blows their operation in leading investigating officer Takahara (Park Hae-soo) to a bar opposite the cinema where he figures out their code. Seemingly unsure as to who is the “Phantom”, he rounds up five suspects and takes them to a clifftop hotel where he encourages them to identify themselves or else they will be interrogated the following day. Along with Cha-kyung whom we already know to be “a” if not “the” Phantom is a police officer against whom Takahara bears a grudge (Sol Kyung-gu), the governor’s flapper secretary Yuriko (Park So-dam), codebreaker Cheon (Seo Hyun-woo) who is very attached to his cat, and terrified mailroom boy Baek-ho (Kim Dong-hee). 

Lee keeps the tension high and us guessing as we try to figure out what’s really going on, who is on which side, and if there’s to this than it first seems. Cha-kyung too seems uncertain, unable to trust any of her fellow suspects who obviously cannot trust her either while trying to maintain her ice cool cover. With sumptuous production design evoking the smoky, moody elegance of the 1930s setting, Lee drops us some clues in focussing on footwear particularly Cha-kyung’s ultra-practical boots and Yuriko’s totally impractical high heels and fancy outfits which as it turns out may have their uses after all when the simmering tension finally boils over and all hell breaks loose at the combination luxury hotel and state torture facility. In any case, as we gradually come to realise, the real “Phantom” the title refers to may be Korea itself, the resistance fighters accused of clinging on to the ghost of a nation which no longer exists while themselves rendered invisible, forced to live underground until the liberation day arrives. 

Phantom screens July 30 as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ⓒ 2023 CJ ENM Co., Ltd., THE LAMP.ltd ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Dream (드림, Lee Byeong-heon, 2023)

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A disgraced football player gets a shot at redemption after agreeing to coach a team hoping to take part in the Homeless Olympics in Lee Byeong-heon’s sporting drama, Dream (드림). The Homeless Olympics was founded in order to advocate for the end of homelessness while combatting discrimination and stigma and takes place annually with teams of homeless people from all over the world taking part. Set in 2010 and inspired by the first Korean delegation to participate, the film is essentially an underdog sports drama in which the act of scoring a single goal is the same as an overall victory.

It is also, meanwhile, heavily critical of celebrity and sensationalist media each of which have a habit of latching onto popular causes in order to further their own careers. Hong-dae (Park Seo-jun) was a popular footballer insecure in his talents, but gained notoriety after poking an obnoxious reporter in the eyes when he repeatedly brought up the topic of his mother who happens to be a fugitive from justice. Deciding to retire from the game, Hong-dae is picked up by a talent agency who want to make him a star and is convinced to become the coach of the homeless football team in order to improve his personal brand while documentarian So-min (Lee Ji-eun) hopes to do something much the same by producing a semi-scripted reality show following the team’s fortunes.

Accordingly, So-min instructs Hong-dae to let her “cast” the key players on the basis of their touching backstories rather than their sporting ability. She comes up with a selection of people who have each for various reasons ended up on the streets but are looking for a way to turn their lives around and repair fractured relationships with family members. One man turned to booze and women while riding high but found himself out of luck when the Asian Financial Crisis ruined his business, while another claims that he’s not really homeless just lying low for a while, and a third was scammed by a friend and saddened by the impending exit of his ex-wife and daughter who will shortly be moving to Australia with her new husband. The film strays into more interesting territory in exploring the story of 44-year-old Beom-su (Jung Seung-gil) who ended up on the streets after a workplace accident left him with a chronic illness he did not have the money to treat, but otherwise falls into the same trap as So-min’s documentary in taking a fairly superficial view of homelessness. By the end of the film many of the players have thankfully moved into stable accommodation but do so largely without explanation aside from having apparently managed to save up for a deposit. 

Positioning their battle for sporting success as a means of reclaiming their self-esteem might also uncomfortably suggest that the reason they’re on the streets is a matter of mental attitude while ignoring other systemic issues that led them there or prevented them from moving on (assuming that they wish to do so). Aligning their struggles with Hong-dae’s and to a lesser extent So-min’s might do something similar while they too are also battling cynicism and self-esteem issues, Hong-dae continuing to blame his mother for his problems complaining that he was born to be second place because she never put him first. As Hong-dae later points out, So-min is also to an extent exploiting the homeless in trying to create an inspirational narrative for her TV show before she like everyone else realises there are other ways to win besides the literal. 

The final message is more one of never giving up as the team finally travel to the Olympics and find themselves out of their depth before deciding to give it everything they have even if it’s very unlikely they will win. There had indeed been discrimination in Korea, a sponsor pulling out describing the homeless as “smelly and disgusting” and expressing a degree of squeamishness about involving them with their brand, but at the Olympics they become the most popular team despite their lack of skill purely because of their charismatic perseverance. One player’s late in the game announcement that he is gay but has now come to accept himself in the knowledge that the problem lies with the world that will not accept him also makes the case for a greater equality if perhaps clumsily conflating two different issues. Nevertheless, IU’s lively performance and the film’s warmhearted tone help to overcome any mild sense of discomfort in its otherwise genial tale of never giving up and regaining your self-esteem even if you feel as if the world has already abandoned you. 

Dream screens July 17 as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 2023 PLUS M ENTERTAINMENT & OCTOBER CINEMA INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Roundup: No Way Out (범죄도시 3, Lee Sang-yong, 2023)

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Ma Dong-seok has been cultivating an image of himself as an action star for quite some time. The kind of marquee name who generally plays the hero, Ma looks back to the genre’s heyday presenting an uncomplicated vision of righteous masculinity, a bruiser with a heart of gold. The Roundup: No Way Out (범죄도시 3, Beomjoedosi 3) is the third in a series of films that began with The Outlaws and is projected to total at least eight instalments each starring Ma as the maverick detective his superiors hate to love. 

It’s true enough that you can’t get away from the more problematic elements of his unreconstructed good bad cop persona. We often see Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) beat information out of suspects which the film treats as a cheeky joke in an otherwise tacit endorsement of police brutality that suggests red tape is the reason the guilty often evade justice. Meanwhile, in a step back from other Ma vehicles there are almost no women in the film and none in the police force. The heart of the case is the death of a 28-year-old woman who “fell” from a hotel room window and is later discovered to have died of a heart attack after being drugged in a club and dragged off by a random man who then literally threw her away to distance himself from the crime. The murder which Seok-do is supposed to be investigating is totally forgotten in his all encompassing drive to find out where the drugs are coming from which eventually descends into a battle of wits with a corrupt police officer who’s teamed up with a Korean-Japanese yakuza to skim his boss’ supply of new designer drug Hiper. 

There is a distinctly uncomfortable thread of xenophobia that runs through the series even if in this case the villainy is discovered closer to home in the form of police corruption. This time around, the threat is once again Japan which is apparently where Hiper originated though petty yakuza Tomo (An Se-ho) now manufactures it in Korea where he’s cut a freelance deal with dodgy cop Joo (Lee Joon-hyuk) to distribute it in the local night life scene without the knowledge of his boss back in Japan, Ichijo (Jun Kunimura). Joo has also cut a deal to sell the drugs to a Chinese gang, so it’s quite bad news for him when Ichijo gets wind of the situation and Tomo takes off with a suitcase full of pills for his own protection. Unluckily for him, Ichijo has already sent his most intimidating assassin, Riki (Munetaka Aoki), to find out what’s been going on behind his back. 

Problematic as it may be, Ma’s retro take on the action star is undeniably entertaining with his frequent hero moments and penchant for one liners. The first time he appears, we see him break up a street fight but mostly interested in finding out if the guy on the ground started it the implication being that perhaps if he did it’s none of his business but otherwise he’s going to have to intervene. Then again as he tells his exasperated boss, his personal motto is “punish and serve” and he’s here to get the job done even if that means wading in all fists blazing without much thought for regulations or procedure. At one point Seok-do and his guys stumble on a crime scene and walk around it touching everything in sight without bothering to even put on so much as gloves. 

In any case, Lee makes every punch land and quite literally as the screen seems to vibrate on contact almost as if the camera itself were taking a blow. Ma’s thunderous fists clash with the sound of justice as he all too easily disables hardened gangsters with one well placed slap. At times, his invincibility borders on the ridiculous but he does eventually allow himself be “defeated” if only temporarily as in his miraculous recovery from being run over by a gangster’s car. In many ways, Joo is Seok-do’s mirror, a bad bad cop with crazy eyes who kills without a second thought and behaves with narcissistic recklessness, overconfident in his abilities to sort his problems through his status as a law enforcement officer. Bruiser he may be, but Seok-do likes arresting people and never uses lethal force even when the opportunity is presented to him, symbolically snapping Riki’s katana and then proceeding to slap him seven ways to Sunday leaving the ice cool assassin collapsed amid a display of Japanese parasols. An end credits scene set three years later in 2018 sets up a fourth instalment and the return of a familiar face besides that of Seok-do himself who continues to charm as the world weary bruiser slapping down crime wherever it rears its ugly head. 

The Roundup: No Way Out is in UK cinemas now.

International trailer (English subtitles)

#Alive (#살아있다, Cho Il-hyung, 2020)

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Is solidarity really the answer to alienation? The latest in a short line of zombie-related crisis movies, Cho Il-hyung’s oddly prescient #Alive (#살아있다, #Saraitda) presses directly into what it means to live in a time of isolation as its already introverted hero discovers the existential dread of true aloneness, orphaned by his society and quite literally surrounded by cannibalistic threat only to rediscover the desire for life in the company of others vowing to survive not out of obligation but individual will. 

A young man in his 20s, Jun-u (Yoo Ah-in) lives at home with his parents and seems to be a virtual shut-in not quite supporting himself as a pro-gamer/vlogger. He ought to be in his element when he turns on his television one day to discover that a violent riot has apparently erupted all over the city, apparently spreading like a virus which causes aggressive behaviour and cannibalistic frenzy. Unfortunately, Jun-u’s parents left early that morning and didn’t have time to prepare food, leaving him money to go out for groceries but obviously it’s too late for that now and it looks like they won’t be coming home. Jun-u is entirely alone, and all the more so when his usual lines of communication are cut. 

Like the thematically similar EXIT, with which #Alive shares its faith in mountaineering, #Alive concerns itself less with the zombie threat than with youthful alienation and a sense of hopeless despair. Jun-u ought to be in his element, but finds himself ill-equipped for surviving the apocalypse given that he lacks basic adult life skills and those he does possess are now ironically unhelpful. Resourceful as he is, he remembers a smartphone app that would help him communicate via FM radio and all he’d need would be a standard earphone jack only all his earphones are wireless. Making the most of his unstable connection he uploads a single photo of himself holding his address written on the side of a cardboard box with the hashtag #I_MUST_SURVIVE to his Instagram in the hope that someone will see him but becomes increasingly despondent as his food and resources dwindle and he receives a disturbing voicemail which suggests his family may not have escaped the disaster. 

Hitting rock bottom he considers taking his own life but is saved by a literal light in the darkness, a laser shone from an opposing apartment signalling another presence he had previously missed. Believing he was alone in the world, Jun-u lost the will to live and faced with the prospect of waiting to starve to death or venturing out among the zombie hoards chose the only agency available to him in deciding the time and manner of his death. Realising he is not alone restores his desire for life, yet Yu-bin (Park Shin-hye), though much more well prepared, is also dealing with her own trauma in the face of crisis in the memory of a climbing fall that leaves her additionally anxious and fearful of physical risk. Where Jun-u flounders, lamenting as so many of us has in recent years, that no one seems to know what’s going on, the news continually flashing the same info screen while telling viewers only to stay home, Yu-bin has constructed a mini fort complete with a series of booby traps perhaps content in her independence having resolved to live and glad to have discovered she is not entirely alone. 

In contrast to disaster movie tropes, the pair instantly bond in their shared bounce back from despair, developing unconventional means of communication while Yu-bin willingly shares her food stash which in turn gives Jun-u the courage to venture outside for supplies. Eventually reuniting they do their best to withstand the zombie hoards, standing in as they are for the various anxieties which otherwise surround and oppress them, only to find themselves betrayed, worried that perhaps they have after all been abandoned and that no one is there looking out for them. Their salvation lies in their connection, the derided social media proving a lifeline that both affirms their existence and restores a sense of community that returns their safety, airlifting them from the locus of despair finally #Alive and returned to the world secure in the knowledge that they are not alone.

Netflix trailer (English subtitles)

Stateless Things (줄탁동시, Kim Kyung-Mook, 2011)

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“We looked everywhere for a place for us to stay, but we could not find it anywhere” one of the twin heroes of Kim Kyung-mook’s indie drama Stateless Things (줄탁동시, Jooltak Dongshi) confesses. As the title suggests, Kim’s eventually surrealist drama follows those who no longer have a home and are instead condemned to wander the margins of an unforgiving city. Finding only loneliness and exploitation they long for an escape and perhaps find one if only in a moment of eclipse. 

Shooting in a more naturalistic, documentary style, Kim first focusses on the figure of Jun (Paul Lee), a young North Korean refugee who lost his mother in the crossing and his father to another woman in Busan. He works in a petrol station but is treated with disdain by his boss who has his eye on his female colleague, Soon-hee (Kim Sae-Byuk), who is a member of the Korean minority in China where most of her family reside. Though originally hostile towards each other, each wary of their mutual isolation and concurrent vulnerability, the pair later bond in a shared resentment of their boss who exploits Jun physically for his labour and seeks to exploit Soon-hee sexually. After each saving the other from the nefarious boss, the pair have no choice but to go on the run taking in a series of tourist spots while looking for another place to settle. 

Meanwhile, across town, a young gay man, Hyun (Yeom Hyun-Joon), is a virtual prisoner in the home of his wealthy, married and closeted lover. He looks out across the midnight city and dances sadly alone in a luxury apartment in the sky while occasionally venturing out to meet other men, mostly older, who similarly only intend to exploit his body. “You have nowhere to go.” the exasperated Sung-woo/Sung-hoon (Lim Hyung-Guk) insists, thrown into jealous anxiety on visiting the flat and finding Hyun absent, yet he cannot really offer him a “home” and is all too aware of the transactional nature of their relationship. Though Hyun is also in a sense “stateless”, he has a power over Sung-woo and is able to wield his youth and beauty like a weapon if one he may not fully be able to control. In any case, he too is excluded from the mainstream society by virtue of his sexuality and socio-economic background. 

When Soon-hee and Jun visit a temple, he remarks on the incongruity of seeing a painting that features both a sun and a moon. She explains a folktale to him in which sun and moon are embodiments of siblings who climbed a rope into the sky to escape a hungry tiger. In his diary, Hyun also envisages a pair of twins one opening a door with his right hand as the other closes it with his left. In the surrealist sequence which closes the film, after a title card that appears 90 minutes in, the two men blur into one another as if they shared the same soul in an almost literal eclipse of the self. Kim nevertheless characterises them as sun and moon who cannot ordinarily share the same space. Jun occupies a world of street level sunniness until the light finally begins to dim leaving him alone in a dusky, rain-soaked city. Hyun meanwhile lives by night in his high rise apartment, a prisoner of luxury who flirts with danger for a sense of escape. 

Then again we might ask if Jun and Hyun are two sides of one whole, a sun and moon protecting the king who finds himself an exile. Kim shifts to scenes of emptiness, rooms without presence and streets without life as if the two men were ghosts of themselves hovering above a rootless Seoul, the sense of eeriness only deepened by Kim’s lengthy takes as he follows Jun walking a lonely path towards nowhere in particular because in the end he too has nowhere to go. Departing from the realism with which the film opened, the final sequence gives way to a kind of rebirth if only one of wandering that leaves its heroes at the mercy of a society continually unwilling to recognise their personhood. 

Stateless Things screened as part of this year’s Queer East .

Trailer (English subtitles)

King and the Clown (왕의 남자, Lee Joon-ik, 2005)

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The feudal order conspires against everyone from minstrel to king in Lee Joon-ik’s Shakespearean historical epic, King and the Clown (왕의 남자, Wang-ui Namja). The Korean title might translate to the equally ambiguous “The King’s Man”, but in any case invites the question of who it is that is the “king” and who the “clown” though in practice it might not matter because their roles are to a degree interchangeable. Nevertheless, a minstrel’s attempt to transgress class boundaries eventually leads to tragedy but also perhaps defiance in his seizing of the little freedom that is given to him. 

The oppressiveness of the system is emphasised in the opening text which explains the historical background and reveals that the king of this story was considered a tyrant, though also thought to be sensitive and intelligent, while permanently damaged by the early death of his mother who was forced to take her own life because of machinations in the court. The King (Jung Jin-young) himself rails at the system complaining that he has no real power and is largely unable to overrule the advice of his courtiers who remain loyal to his late father and simultaneously force him to obey the rule of a man who is already dead. In this internecine feudal society, not even the king is free. 

This might in a sense explain his tyranny, borne both of an anxiety over the precarity of his rule (the text also reveals that he was deposed by his courtiers shortly after the film concludes) and is otherwise engaged in a kind of frustrated boundary pushing. At heart, he is a wounded and petulant child. His eventual decision to participate in the clown show put on by Jang-saeng (Kam Woo-sung) and his troupe of jesters hints at his mental instability and growing inability to discern reality from fantasy, or to a point perhaps there is no true “reality” for a king and so the distinction no longer matters as there is no real difference for him between a man “dying” in a play and dying for real. 

For Jang-saeng, however, there is a difference. He and his brother-in-arms Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi) are technically on the run after Gong-gil ended up killing their manager to defend Jang-saeng who had tried to protect him from exploitation in being pimped out as a male sex worker to earn extra money for the company. It’s Jang-saeng who hits on the lucrative opportunities of satire after teaming up with three other minstrels in the capital and hearing tales of the King’s scandalous sex life. This obviously gets him into hot water with the authorities, though Jang-saeng talks himself out of trouble by convincing conflicted courtier Cheo-seon (Jang Hang-seon) to allow them to perform before the King who actively enjoys being mocked and brings the clowns into the palace to entertain him at his pleasure causing a further rift with his conservative courtiers who do not enjoy having their dirty dealings exposed through bawdy street theatre. 

The repeated visual motif of the tightrope emphasises the fine line Jang-saeng is walking as a commoner in the court. Cheo-seon had hoped their performance would show the King the extent of the corruption among his courtiers, but the results leave Jang-seong conflicted as he sees men die as a result of his comedy while failing in his primary goal of protecting Gong-gil from exploitation as he quickly becomes a favourite of the King again endangering their position as they become a target for the King’s mistress (Kang Sung-yeon), a former sex worker who had like them used her natural gifts to transgress the boundaries of class. Cheo-seon complains that it’s the King’s “lust for a boy” which has corrupted the court, while Jang-seong’s resentment may otherwise be unwarranted as Gong-gil appears to like and pity the King and may have come to his own decision about advancing his fortunes despite Jang-seong’s assertion that there are some things that should not be sold.  

But as Jang-seong comes to realise, all around the tightrope is an abyss. “Never knew a fool who knew his place” Jang-seong wrote in one of his plays and that is in someways his tragedy, that he dared to challenge the social order but in the end could not overcome it and neither could the King. Even so he may find a kind of freedom in seeking escape from a cruel and oppressive society in the only way that is available to him. “The world’s but a stage. Kingly is he who struts for a while, then exits in style” Jang-seong exclaims, a “sightless fool” who finally knows where he stands.

King and the Clown screened as part of this year’s Queer East .

Trailer (English subtitles)

A Man and a Gisaeng (남자와 기생, Shim Wu-seob, 1969)

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Under the authoritarian regime of Park Chung-hee, Korean Cinema was subject to increasingly stringent censorship and film was seen as an important means of moral instruction. The central message behind Shim Wu-seob’s raucous comedy A Man and a Gisaeng (남자와 기생, Namjawa Gisaeng) is that a man should be faithful to his family and avoid the double betrayal represented by drinking in the company of women which fritters away financial security and endangers his relationship with his wife. Yet the film is also subversive despite the underlying conservative message in making a mockery of so-called “traditional” gender roles.

Indeed, the film’s very thesis is that men are weak and women are strong. The men visit who gisaeng appear to have done so to reaffirm their dominant masculinity through their financial power in essentially paying women to be subservient towards them. Yet the gisaeng themselves are fully in control of the game they are playing as one makes clear when she tells a drunken businessman off after he gets handsy with her. She reminds him that a gisaeng is a person too, not a doll to be played with, and when he doesn’t listen she gets up and leaves proving who it is that has the upper hand in this situation. All the businessman can do is splutter and threaten the otherwise mild-mannered male manager. 

The hero’s boss, Heo (Heo Jang-gang), is a henpecked husband who visits gisaeng as a means of escape from his domineering wife (Do Kum-bong) who punishes him like a child. He asks Tae-ho (Gu Bong-Seo) to resign after catching him sitting at his desk darning socks to earn extra money and though it might be perfectly reasonable to fire an employee for brazenly doing another job on company time, Heo mainly lets him go because of his unmanliness. Tae-ho is a fully domesticated man who does work traditionally regarded as “feminine” in taking in sewing and looking after all of the domestic tasks such as cooking and cleaning as a “maternal” figure to his younger sister Tae-suk (Kim Chung-ja) who is then depicted as “manly” in her mastery of martial arts. 

It quickly becomes clear that the “effeminate” man Tae-ho is the film’s strongest character and the only one largely in control of his circumstances. He agrees to become a gisaeng partly because he needs to earn money after being fired, but also he claims as a “joke” before committing himself to punishing men who neglect their duty to their families by shaming them into changing their behaviour as he largely does with Heo who, bizarrely, develops a fascination with Tae-ho’s gisaeng persona San-wol as she apparently reminds him of the first love he was prevented from marrying because of her family’s disapproval. 

The gender subversion is in essence the joke, but there are also constant hints that it might not be and Tae-ho’s female persona is also authentic, not least among them the music cues which are extremely ironic. For example, the melody of “Don’t Fence Me In” plays over Tae-ho at the house of gisaeng, as do the strains of “Nature Boy” which also hint at a validation of Tae-ho’s expression of femininity. Before being fired, Tae-ho tells Heo that he’s repressing himself and it isn’t good for him, and there is a (joking) suggestion in the final scenes that Heo’s attraction to San-wol is partly born of her seeming masculinity. He did indeed unwittingly appreciate a drag performance from Tae-ho’s queer-coded musician friend, after all.

It’s also possible to read Heo’s reunion with his wife as a new appreciation for her own “masculine” qualities in her capacity to dominate him even if the film simultaneously suggests that the role of a “good wife” is to offer “affection” to her husband and if the husband visits gisaeng it’s the wife’s fault for not giving it to him. Even so, what the film’s conclusion implies is closer to a rebalancing than might be expected in allowing Jeong-mi, the gisaeng with whom Tae-ho falls in love to counter any suggestion of queerness, to open her own shop as an independent woman pursuing a relationship with Tae-ho who is then a travelling salesmen selling cosmetics. Jeong-mi asks Tae-ho to give up “knitting” before they get married which would signal a remasculinisation, but Tae-suk, though dressing in a more feminine fashion to meet her in-laws, is not directly asked to give up Taekwondo and it seems that her fiancé appreciates her feistiness rather than seeking to soften it. Even Heo’s wife if seeming more cheerful has not given up control in their marriage despite her own drag experience in the gisaeng house yet their relationship is now considered “repaired”. “Traditional” gender roles have ostensibly been reaffirmed, Heo’s marriage is saved and both Tae-ho and his sister are about to marry, but they’ve also been subverted and redefined in unexpected ways. Some of this may only be possible because A Man and a Gisaeng is an absurd comedy of the kind Shim was known for, but it nevertheless hints at an underlying plea for greater social freedom in an authoritarian era. 

A Man and a Gisaeng screened as part of this year’s Queer East .

Jeong-sun (정순, Jeong Ji-hye, 2022)

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“Is it a crime to be old?” a middle-aged woman asks after finding herself the centre of scandal in Jeong Ji-hye’s timely drama, Jeong-sun (정순). Surrounded by an ageist and misogynistic society, Jeong-sun has always bided her time and played by the rules but is acutely aware of her predicament as an older woman knowing that if she loses her factory job no one else will hire her and therefore submits herself to all the petty microaggressions of life on the margins. 

Chief among them would be her obnoxious floor manager Do-yun, little more than a teenager with a clipboard and an inflated sense of his own importance. She and the other women gossip about Do-yun’s dubious love life which partially relies on abusing his authority to date factory girls whom he gives preferential treatment and then discards once he’s bored. There’s also a rumour going around that the managers plan to fire some of the older workers like Jeong-sun after hiring permanent employees while a generational divide is developing between the full timers and the college students who turn up for the summer and secretly think they’re better than this. Jeong-sun accidentally offends one of them by playfully making fun of her putting on makeup in the changing room given that they’re all about to put on identical white uniforms and go through decontamination to head to the factory floor. 

The irony is that she begins to bond with new employee Yeong-su out of their shared sense of alienation as marginalised middle-aged people. Around her age, Yeong-su previously worked casual jobs in construction but has switched to the factory because of knee damage caused by years of manual labour. His physical injury has further damaged his sense of masculinity leaving him deeply insecure and desperate for approval from other men including that from the continually obnoxious Do-yun. When Do-yun asks him if he has a girlfriend, Yeong-su sheepishly replies that he’s too old for all that only for Do-yun to insultingly add that he doubts he has the time or money considering he just works on the shop floor. When Jeong-su’s daughter Yu-jin (Yoon Geumseona) and her fiancé ask her if she might have a boyfriend, Jeong-sun gives a similar reply seemingly feeling a degree of shame about being an older woman daring to date. She tells Yeong-su that they should slow down because she’s embarrassed to hear the other workers gossiping about them, but Yeong-su takes it the wrong away assuming that she too looks down on him for being a penniless factory worker with not much to his name.  

It’s this combination of ageism and sexism that gradually destroys their relationship. Mocked by Do-yun who calls him a “naive” man, Yeong-su shows him a video Jeong-sun had allowed him to take of her singing in her underwear in a moment of empowerment. Soon, it’s leaked online and Jeong-sun becomes the talk of the town, a figure of fun just for being a middle-aged woman embracing her sexuality. While the younger women laugh at her, Jeong-sun’s daughter and friends are universally sympathetic as is the policeman Yu-jin reports the incident to, but she later finds that not even the police really take the case seriously despite Jeong-sun’s increasingly precarious mental state. “I’m sorry to say this, but younger females are usually the victim” the policeman adds as they push Jeong-sun to settle, implying that no one’s all that interested in Jeong-su’s video and the taboo incident is somewhat embarrassing even to him. Yeong-su meanwhile offers a pleading “apology” before trying to convince Jeong-sun not to press charges because he’ll never work again with bad knees and a criminal record. 

Yeong-su said he’d move away and that it would all blow over, but Jeong-sun later catches sight of him laughing and joking with Do-yun and the other guys from the factory very much one of the boys. Her life has been ruined, but they’ve got off scot free. “Why should I stay put?” Jeong-sun finally asks in directly standing up to Do-yun who is after all a cowardly boy who bullies other men to bolster his fragile sense of masculinity. He responds by calling her a “crazy bitch” while she destroys his false authority and plays him at his own game, somehow taking something back if only in a moment of self-destruction. Where she finds herself is literally in the driving seat of her own life, seizing the opportunity for freedom and independence that comes with age but also the breaking of a spell that had been designed to keep her in her place. 

Jeong-sun screened as part of this year’s Red Lotus Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Switch (스위치, Ma Dae-yun, 2023)

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An egotistical actor is given an unexpected lesson in what it is that makes life worth living when he’s suddenly transported to a parallel world in Ma Dae-yun’s charming Christmas dramedy, Switch (스위치). Rather than the body swap comedy the title might suggest, Ma’s warmhearted morality tale is a more a meditation on what might have been and may be again while contemplating the emptiness of a life of fame and riches when there’s no one to share it with. 

“What matters more than money?” top star Park Kang (Kwon Sang-Woo) chuckles after telling his manager he’ll accept a job he just described in quite insulting terms after being informed it comes with a hefty paycheque. Kang is currently riding high. He’s become enormously successful and even a recent sex scandal involving his co-star in a TV drama has only boosted his profile. Yet he tells his analyst that he can’t sleep and attributes it to “depression and anxiety”. He treats those around him poorly and most particularly his long suffering best friend from his fringe theatre days, Joe Yoon (Oh Jung-Se) who now works as his manager, while struggling to accept his loneliness and meditating on lost love in the memory of the woman he broke up with in order to chase stardom. 

After getting into a weird taxi one Christmas Eve, he’s suddenly granted the “wish” of getting to find out what would have happened if he’d made a different choice. After waking up in an unfamiliar house he discovers that he’s married with two children and slumming it fringe theatre while Joe Yoon is now the superstar having aced the audition Kang ran out on to chase Soo-hyun (Lee Min-Jung) to the airport and convince her not to leave. Of course, Kang is originally quite unhappy about all of this. He doesn’t understand why no one recognises him anymore and resents that he’s suddenly subject to the rules of “ordinary” people again after a decade as a pampered star. In his acceptance speech after winning an award, he’d stated his intention to “forget” his roots as a humble actor and embrace his new role as a member of the showbiz elite fully demonstrating his sense of alienation and insecurity along with his intense loneliness. As the taxi driver had said, Kang has “everything”. He’s achieved his dreams and lives the high life he’d always dreamed of, yet he’s deeply unhappy.

But his “new” life immediately challenges his sense of masculinity in realising that he has little power without money and is in fact financially dependent on Soo-hyun whom he may also have robbed of a bright future by preventing her from studying abroad and achieving success as an artist. Meanwhile he looks down on himself for continuing to follow his artistic dreams in fringe theatre when his plays attract few audiences members and make little money. Just as Joe Yoon had become his manager, so he ends up getting a taste of what it’s like trying to manage a “star” while coming to appreciate that Joe Yoon may be feeling just as lonely and unfulfilled as he once had. 

Yet even as Kang settles into his new life as a husband and father while slowly rebuilding his acting career though a combination of talent, supportive friendship, and good luck, he fails to learn the right lessons continuing to yearn for external validation through material success. He spends money on fancy dinners and tries to move the family into a swanky apartment in Seoul without realising that he’s already got a “home” in the quaint little provincial house he and Soo-hyun set up together filled with memories (that admittedly he doesn’t actually have) of the children when they were small. Slowly, he begins to look beyond himself while developing a new sense of security that means he doesn’t need to chase status-based affirmation in empty materialism but now has a new sense of what’s really important. A charming season morality tale with a little more than a hint of A Christmas Carol, Ma’s gentle drama never suggests that success itself is wrong or that Kang must give up his movie star persona to become a happy everyman but only insists that true happiness is brokered by treating others well and being treated well in return much more than it is by consumerist success.

Switch screens at UltraStar Cinemas Mission Valley April 22/24 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase.

International trailer (English subtitles)