Tag: Lee Yeong-hoon

Top Star (톱스타, Park Joong-hoon, 2013)

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Fame is good, but can turn you into a monster, according to entertainment industry veteran Won-joon (Kim Min-jun) in the directorial debut from actor Park Hoon-jung, Top Star (톱스타). Apparently inspired by the time park was caught smoking marijuana, the film explores the cutthroat nature of Korea’s entertainment industry in which stars are often held to unfairly high standards, but equally the pressures of success and the lengths some people will go to to maintain it.

Tae-sik’s (Uhm Tae-woong) problem is that he started out as Won-joon’s manager, or really more like a personal assistant in which he was responsible for all of Won-joon’s life including covering for his various indiscretions which Tae-sik did without a second thought. For his part, Won-joon tries to be a cool boss, but when he gives Tae-sik the night off for his birthday it backfires for both of them. Tae-sik is refused entry to a posh club he goes to all the time because he’s not with Won-joon, ramming home to him how insignificant he really is. Won-joon, meanwhile, irresponsibly gets behind the wheel of his sports car after a few drinks. He ends up knocking a delivery driver off his bike, but in consideration of his position, just drives off. Though he later considers turning himself in, his management team won’t allow it. Tae-sik ends up taking the blame, though in return Won-joon promises to make his dreams of becoming an actor come true by getting him a part in his latest TV drama.

It’s not really explained why the drunken hit-and-run would end Won-joon’s career but is apparently not a barrier to Tae-sik starting one. His star soon starts to rise to point that he begins to rival Won-joon by pinching some of his advertising gigs. Won-joon can’t help but see this as a kind of betrayal, feeling professionally threatened and also a little resentful that Tae-sik does not appear to value their friendship. There is a curiously homoerotic tension between them, but part of the problem is that despite what Won-joon says they can’t really be friends because of the power differential and the fact that they have now become rivals. Won-joon has almost become a target to hit for Tae-sik, while Won-joon continues to look down on him, making constant cracks about how he used to be his dogsbody to put him back in his place.

At the same time, others in the industry regard Tae-sik as “tasteless” and “low class”, a vulgar upstart who is too overt in his ambition and too crass to fit into the pseudo-upper-class world of show business given his working-class background. A subplot sees him wrestling with the expectation that he will take care of a father that abandoned him and has since developed dementia. In some ways, he’ll always be the driver who was turned away from the club. A film director keen enough to work with him to wait hours sitting in a park even point blank tells him that he’s not a good actor and that all he has going for him is “energy”, so he shouldn’t be so picky about his projects. Yet these kinds of comments only seem to spur Tae-sik on to prove himself by living a superstar lifestyle.

Nevertheless, he disapproves of the way Won-joon behaves with women and particularly his treatment of secret girlfriend Mi-na (So Yi-hyun), a producer, on whom Tae-sik also has a crush. His relationship with Won-joon may have begun as a kind of hero worship that Won-joon wilfully used to his advantage, but soon descends into toxic rivalry while Tae-sik’s own insecurities lead him to ruin what he has in always seeking more. He begins to treat those around him badly. Having made his own best friend his manager, what began as a friendship between equals is soon disrupted by the same power imbalance that marred his relationship with Won-joon. Betraying his management company, he strikes out on his own producing a project he pinched from the veteran actor but becomes an on-set tyrant demanding endless retakes in search of a perfection that doesn’t exist because of his own insecurities. He will stop at nothing to maintain his position as “top star”, but eventually suffers an ironic fate that nevertheless humbles him and finally reminds Tae-sik what it was he really wanted as a lowly manager dreaming of showbiz success. Won-joon was right, fame really does turn you into a monster one way or another, and even in Tae-sik’s desire to start over there’s a kernel of desperation that suggests once it’s got its claws into you, it’ll never really let go.

No Regret (후회하지 않아, Leesong Hee-il, 2006)

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No Regret poster“Why do we have to be so miserable?” a frustrated cabaret bar owner exclaims part-way through a harebrained scheme to get both money and revenge against a lover’s betrayal and a relentlessly unfair society. The debut feature from Leesong Hee-il, No Regret (후회하지 않아, Huhoehaji Anha) is regarded as Korea’s first explicitly gay film from an out gay director but is as interested in social disparity and multiple oppressions as it is in contemporary gay life in a sometimes unforgiving Seoul.

Our hero, Su-min (Lee Yeong-hoon), is an orphan recently ejected from the orphanage after turning 18 and leaving high school. Like many young men in his position, Su-min has been effectively hung out to dry and has very little chance of making much of a life for himself. Quietly angry, he works hard in a factory by day, and studies at a cram school at night, hoping to make enough money to apply for college and ensure a better life for himself. He also has another part-time job as a “designated driver”, getting drunk people and their cars back home in one piece. One particular job, however, changes his life forever when he arrives to meet Jae-min (Kim Nam-gil) who, apparently, seems to fall in love with him at first sight. Despite perhaps being flattered, Su-min hesitates but turns down Jae-min’s overtures, either simply afraid and still uncomfortable with his sexuality or resentful of the awkward power dynamic between them.

The problematic power differential raises its head again when Su-min realises that Jae-min is the factory boss’ spoilt chaebol son seconds after learning he and his friend, both of whom are “casual” rather than “regular” employees, have been let go in a mass layoff. Jae-min, still smitten, pulls strings and makes sure Su-min keeps his job, but Su-min isn’t comfortable with being indebted in that way or of taking another man’s place just because the boss has taken a fancy to him so he quits in anger and does his best to shake Jae-min off his trail. Jobs are hard to come by for uneducated poor boys, and after a spell washing dishes proves unsuccessful he finds himself giving in and taking a job in a host bar karaoke box offering illicit sexual services to select clientele.

Su-min, as he later suggests to Jae-min, is perhaps freer than most to embrace his sexuality given that he has no family to disapprove of him. He is, in a sense, dependent on the feeling of solidarity he has with the other orphans, like his ladies’ man roommate who despite offering to take Su-min to a brothel so he’ll realise what he’s missing out on is actually broadly supportive of Su-min’s sexuality, but is afraid more of them discovering his “fall” into sex work than of them realising he is gay which most of them seem to have done already. In any case, it’s perhaps unsurprising that he personally continues to struggle with his sexuality given his extreme youth even after becoming used to life at the club and the financial benefits it can bring.

As the “madame” tells him, though he’s gay himself he doesn’t hire “gay” guys and it remains true that most of the other sex workers are straight men who are only in the business because they have no other way of making money. Jae-min, meanwhile, feels himself at least a prisoner of his privilege as he repeatedly fails to standup to his domineering mother who has arranged a marriage with a suitable young woman despite knowing that her son is gay. Well educated and wealthy, Jae-min has accepted his sexuality but is unable to embrace it or to break free of the patriarchal social codes which insist that, especially considering he is an only child, he has a responsibility to obey his parents’ wishes by living up to their conservative values, marrying a woman, providing an heir, and taking over the company. Jae-min’s mother even later tells him that she doesn’t care if he continues to sleep with men, but that he must marry the woman she’s chosen for appearance’s sake, little caring for the emotional wellbeing of the oblivious fiancée she is about to condemn to a loveless marriage.

Jae-min continues to chase Su-min who continues to rebuff him until finally seduced, but a note of darkness remains at the centre of their relationship in Jae-min’s self loathing and Su-min’s resentful sense of inferiority. An accidental betrayal born of momentary weakness and followed by an eventual breakthrough leads to a very dark place indeed as the wounded parties decide to take misplaced revenge, against an oppressive society as much as against those who have wronged them. Nevertheless, a kind of “equality” is perhaps achieved through wounds given and received giving way to a more openhearted connection albeit one with a dark genesis. An important step forward in representation, Leesong Hee-il’s indie drama is an oddly hopeful romance in which the heroes eventually succeed in becoming themselves in defiance of the societal oppression all around them.

US trailer (English subtitles)