Tag: Yoo Hae-jin

Big Deal (소주전쟁, Choi Yun-jin, 2025)

Posted on by

When Korea’s biggest Soju conglomerate, Gukbo, is on the verge of bankruptcy in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and the CEO’s mismanagement, it provokes a national outcry but also the attention of a hundred foreign firms all swarming over Korea like vultures eager to get a piece of the pie. Loosely based on a real life incident, Choi Yun-jin’s Big Deal (소주전쟁, Soju Jeonjaeng) is more evenhanded than one might expect at once decrying the amoral business practices of American corporate imperialism while pointing out that maybe things aren’t perfect in Korea either with its dynastic approach to company management and workaholic lifestyle that comes at the cost of familial bonds.

In fact it sort of implies that In-beom’s (Lee Je-hoon) desire to send Gukbo into bankruptcy so they can take it over and flip it is a kind of revenge against his own workaholic father who passed away 10 years previously, his death presumably hastened by stress and overwork though what In-beom resents more than anything else is that he was never really much of a father to him. That might be why Gukbo’s earnest financial officer Pyo (Yoo Hae-jin) comes to fill that role. In-beom complains that Pyo is stupid and naive, knowing nothing of how the world works, but also that his stupidity makes him feel like an arsehole because it forces him to realise that he’s doing something wrong. 

Caught between In-beom whose firm, Solquin, are pretending to consult on the administration process but in reality feeding into to their subsidiary to buy up shares, and the CEO, Pyo is the only one thinking about what’s going to happen to all their employees when the place goes bust. Like In-beom’s father, Pyo is also a workaholic whose wife and daughter left him because he was never there. He remains dedicated to Gukbo, but not to the extent of breaking the rules, even if he eventually goes along with it when the CEO suggests a dodgy plan to undercut Solquin and maintain control of the company his father founded. What becomes apparent is that Seok (Son Hyun-joo) is out of his depth and that the only qualification he has is being the boss’ son. It’s his fault the company got into trouble because of his reckless expansion plans while he tries to cover up his failings through cronyism, playing golf with the great and the good while leaving Pyo to clean up the mess he’s made.

Nevertheless, for good or ill, Gukbo comes to represent a Korea preyed upon by venal foreign influence. When the plan is exposed, Pyo is sure that the creditors won’t agree to bankruptcy because they won’t be able to stand such a typically Korean business being placed into foreign hands. In-beom thinks that’s ridiculous and no one has that kind of patriotic attachment to a company, but it turns out he’s right and Solquin have an uphill battle in front of them. Yet even In-beom begins to tire of his colleagues’ underhandedness. Though there are a handful of women working at the American investment firm, the culture is extremely macho and misogynistic with liberal and frankly unprofessional use of the F-word as In-beom’s male colleagues make obnoxious jokes about who is getting their dick sucked by whom. Pyo and his team may drink too much, but at least they’re collegiate rather than adversarial.

The question is really whether as In-beom says making money is just that and can’t be either sleazy or noble, while Pyo definitely thinks there are right ways and wrong ways to earn. Solquin is definitely wrong, while Gukbo isn’t entirely right either. In-beom may have a point when he challenges his old-fashioned salaryman mentality of putting the company first every time, but the conclusion Pyo seems to come to is to let all go and just be yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to stoop to their dishonest ways of doing business, but equally it doesn’t mean you have to let them walk all over you either. Capitalism is an inherently corrupt system, but there’s not a lot either of them can do about that even if eventually meeting somewhere in the middle as Pyo loses his faith in chaebol culture and In-beom realises he’s just as disposable when his American bosses chew up him and spit him out as soon as he’s served his usefulness. A closing title reminds us we’re still dealing with a lot of these problems 20 years later with companies that are too big to fail and inadequate regulation though Pyo at least seems to have found a happy medium doing what he loves on his own terms.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Choi Yun-jin directed this film, but her name was later removed from the credits after being fired by the production company who accused her of misappropriating the script.

Yadang: The Snitch (야당, Hwang Byeng-gug, 2025)

Posted on by

A Korean prosecutor can make or break a president, according to the ambitious Ku (Yoo Hae-jin) making a final power play to put an arrogant chaebol son in his place. But Ku isn’t trying to make a stand for the rule of law so much as bend it to his own will while securing his position, because in the world of Yadang: The Snitch (야당) justice is largely illusionary while mediated through the complex interplay between the social and political elite, crime, and law enforcement.

The hero, Kang-su (Kang Ha-neul), makes this plain in explaining that the big drug busts that get the police into the papers are largely all orchestrated through the snitchery of yadang like himself, a set up in which low-level drug users are encouraged to become police informants in return for lenient sentences allowing the detectives to take care of the dealers. Perhaps that’s all very well, as detective Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon) says, there’s no point locking up hundreds of users because the supply is endless and it makes no difference to the business. Kang-su’s likening of them cockroaches is a little problematic, even if he has a point that if you want to get rid of the infestation you have to go in for the nest.

But it turns out the nest is in an unexpected place because the nexus of corruption is in the government and political system which has been infiltrated by wealthy businessmen looking to further their own ambitions through politics while their feckless children behave like princelings knowing they can do whatever they want and then ring their fathers to make whatever consequences might occur go away. Though the film doesn’t go too deeply into it, there is something in the fact that both Ku and Kang-su come from poor, single-parent families though the direction of their ambitions might be quite different. Ku has studied hard to become a prosecutor and escape his poverty, but has only 10 years to make it into the top ranks or be forced to resign. He exploits Kang-su’s desire for wealth and agency to help him achieve his ambitions but though he describes him as a brother, is all too ready to throw him under the bus once he’s no longer useful to him. 

For his part, Kang-su relishes his role within this ironic system as someone on the fringes of crime but also facilitating law enforcement without being manipulated by the police in the same way that their informants often are. Sang-jae swears to protect a young actress after picking her up in a bust if she helps him catch the kingpins but in the end he can’t do it, partly because of Ku, but also because at the end of the day his fellow officers have the same opinion of their snitches as Ku does his and aren’t terribly invested in their safety or wellbeing. After getting caught up in Ku’s showboating raid on a hotel where chaebol son Hoon is partying with yakuza drug dealers, Su-jin’s (Chae Won-bin) career is ruined and on her release she has only the drug scene to rely on with the consequence that she becomes an addict and a dealer herself.

But it was Hoon (Ryu Kyung-soo) that made her a user in the first place by spiking a drink and then went on to use his privilege to control her and make sure that she stayed within his orbit. Ambitious men like Ku make their deals and let the chaebol sons get away with their crimes, though his late in the game attempt to remind Hoon that he could ruin his father’s chances of becoming Korea’s next president if he chose to implies his own sense of worthiness that he is actually above this illusionary elite though he may be overestimating his reach. These three branches of branches of power operate in a symbiotic system and need each other to survive. Ku is only really a kind of Yadang himself, mediating between a social and political elite while enjoying only the illusion of power and independence. Hwang ups the action stakes with some high impact set pieces including that in which Kang-su uses the brute force of his Hummer to literally bulldoze a car full of drug dealers while the police chase after them with metal poles, but seems to suggest the real violence stems from the system if ultimately opting for an ironic buddy cop conclusion in which Kang-su uses his considerable skills in a more legitimate fashion.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Space Sweepers (승리호, Jo Sung-hee, 2021)

Posted on by

If we’re content to ruin one world, why do we assume our salvation lies on another? Billed as Korea’s first blockbuster science-fiction extravaganza, Space Sweepers (승리호, Seungriho) finds a ragtag gang of junkers quite literally cleaning up humanity’s mess while ironically marginalised into outer space by internecine capitalist consumerism which in insult to injury offers to sell you a cure for the disease it has caused but only to those whom it deems worthy of its dubious promises. 

By 2092, the Earth has become all but uninhabitable. Led by 1952-year-old messianic scientist Sullivan, UTS Corporation has prepared a new artificial orbiting home but only the elite are invited while the remaining 95% linger on the poisoned ground below or else, like the crew of the Victory, wander in space attempting to make a living from clearing the debris left behind after countless sattelltes and space station launches. Yet as jaded space sweeper Tae-ho (Song Joong-ki) remarks, the more you work the more debt you earn. The Victory is a well equipped ship and you’d think that would mean greater earning potential but all it means is that it costs more to maintain while the initial outlay has landed them with unsustainable debt not to mention constant random fines and official interference. All of which is why when they find a little girl hidden in a storage compartment of an abandoned vessel and realise she’s the missing android that’s all over the news, they decide to play off the Black Foxes “terrorist” organisation who kidnapped her and UTC who want her back for all they can get. 

As might be expected for all his claims that “humanity is dirty” in its failure to protect the planet, Sullivan is no pure hearted saviour but an amoral elitist intent on terraforming Mars as some kind of authoritarian “utopia” populated only the “best” of humanity. He claims not to care about money, but cites the false equivalency that those with the deepest pockets must necessarily be those with the greatest capability while privately describing those left below as expendable and not really worth saving. Dressed like a cult leader, even at one point appearing as a giant hologram, Sullivan’s appearance owes a significant visual debt to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Gendo Ikari, leaving little doubt as to his megalomaniacal intensions as he wilfully sells a solution to a problem he himself helped to cause while continuing to exploit the Earth and the people still on it to hasten its demise and his own enrichment. 

While the central message reinforces the idea that large corporations are not to be trusted while the capitalistic system they uphold is inherently destructive, it also perhaps undercuts that of the impending environmental crisis with which we are faced if we can’t mend our ways fast enough. Even so, it falls to the space sweepers to mount a unified global resistance against the wilful destruction of their homeland in protecting the android, Dorothy / Kot-nim (Park Ye-rin), who of course holds the key to saving the world. Despite having taken in her in with a view to ransoming her, the crew soon bond with the adorable little girl as unofficial daughter while Tae-ho alone remains reluctant in grief over child for whom he continually searches while internalising a sense of resentful failure in the knowledge that he lost her because of his own self-absorbed sense of hopelessness. 

Even so, there may be something a little uncomfortable in the final resolution in which the crew coalesces into a recognisable family unit each of them somehow “improved” as they accept their responsibility for Kot-nim whether in giving up drinking or erasing tattoos. Nevertheless, the film is refreshingly progressive in its depiction of a transgender character who gains the confidence to be their authentic self thanks to the unconditional solidarity among the crew members, though the sudden reversal of UTS from cult-like evil corporate entity to remorseful force for good seems rather optimistic as if the only problem was Sullivan and not the system that gave rise to him.  While the overall aesthetic may be somewhat televisual, Space Sweepers does feature some interesting production design and impressive CGI though its greatest strength lies in the jaded idealism of its space bandit protagonists as they band together to resist their marginalisation with mutual solidarity and compassion.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Exhuma (파묘, Jang Jae-hyun, 2024)

Posted on by

The vengeful ghost of Japanese imperialism rises to take its revenge on its forgetful children in Jang Jae-hyun’s eerie supernatural horror, Exhuma (파묘, Pamyo). As in The Wailing, the supernatural threat is in this case not of Korean origin which causes a problem for otherwise powerful shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun). As a Korean exorcist, she is apparently not best placed to defeat an alien spirit while insisting that Japanese ghosts are more dangerous because they kill indiscriminately and cannot be reasoned with.

This is often true of ghosts in Japanese folklore. Their grudges become all-consuming. Revenge is often taken against society or humanity in general rather than a specific target and can even affect those the ghost once would not have wished to harm. In this case, it appears the supernatural entity in question has retained some of his selfhood while screaming for a hundred years having been sealed away in what one person describes as the worst burial plot in Korea. The ghost’s newborn great grandson won’t stop crying, apparently a family affliction, and so they want to do something about this apparent curse. But that requires digging into the past and unearthing its unpleasantness such as the fact the family’s immense wealth is thanks to the great-grandfather’s questionable politics as a full on militarist committed to the furthering of the Japanese empire. 

Meanwhile, the other ghost that haunts them is that of a giant samurai who was killed at the battle of Sekigahara, which of course means he could also have participated in Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea only eight years previously. The film hints at backstories, never explaining why it is that Hwa-rim speaks fluent Japanese or what it was that happened in Japan except that she apparently found out that Korean shamanism doesn’t work that well on the average Japanese ghost. It all goes back to some kind of mad monk and fox diviner who did some black magic on the peninsula as a whole though it’s not clear exactly what it’s been doing for the last 70 years or so. 

These different kinds of spiritual practice and folklore beliefs jangle together seemingly without border or conflict. The funeral director (Yoo Hae-jin) who works with Hwa-rim and her geomancer friend (Choi Min-sik) is a Christian but apparently has no objection to witnessing shamanic rights nor disbelief in their power as if his twin belief systems simply sat next to each other. Even so, there does seem to be something entirely distinct about Hwa-rim’s practice that is different from Japanese Shintoism despite it its superficial similarities to the extent that her abilities have no effect on a Japanese spirit. 

Then again, this evil is older and deeper than the original ghost apparently wailing for a hundred years about his imprisonment and keen to take down all his descendants in self-destructive revenge. A grave digger spots what seems to be a snake with the head of a person, while no one seems to take the warnings about opening the coffin seriously. Everyone talks about grave robbers, ironically looking for riches among the dead, though the what the team find themselves doing is unearthing the buried past, trying to free themselves from it and perhaps the oppressive yoke of the colonialist legacy.

Jang heightens the sense of anxiety with faced paced, rhythmic editing coupled with scenes of extreme eeriness. He hints at a world beyond our own filled with vengeful spirits and lurking evil while the threats are largely supernatural rather than human even if the ghosts themselves did originate as ordinary people who were also fairly problematic before they died. In some ways, the film might be saying that it doesn’t do any good to go digging up the past but also that if you don’t you may have to live with a slowly festering evil that will visit itself on your children and your children’s children. Still, like the little boy who secretly kept grandma’s false teeth because he wanted something to remember her by, the past can be a difficult thing to let go of and simply re-burying it in a nicer place may not be enough to free yourself from the long buried generational trauma of an almost forgotten past.

US trailer (English subtitles)

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

Posted on by

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)

The Battle: Roar to Victory (봉오동 전투, Won Shin-yeon, 2019)

Posted on by

The Battle roar to voctory poster 1Besides seeing the birth of Korean cinema, 1919 was something of a flashpoint in the nation’s 20th century history. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910, thereafter instituting an increasingly brutal colonialist regime. On March 1, 1919 the people rose up in an act of mass protest inspired by the provision for “Self-Determination” included in US president Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points speech outlining a path towards enduring peace. Though the protest was peaceful, it was quickly suppressed by Japanese troops resulting in thousands of deaths and mass incarcerations.

The Battle: Roar to Victory (봉오동 전투, Bongodong Jeontoo) situates itself a year after the protest as the Independence Movement began to intensify, and is inspired by real life events apparently often absent from the textbooks in which several factions eventually came together to wipe out an “elite’ squad of Japanese troops which had been put together to take down guerrilla Resistance fighters. Our heroes have been charged with collecting money from a fundraiser and conveying it to the Independence Movement in exile in Shanghai but are drawn into a wider battle against Japanese brutality on their way.

The Japanese colonial forces are indeed brutal, if often cowardly. When we first meet crazed commander Yasukawa (Kazuki Kitamura), he’s butchering a tiger in some kind of symbolic act of intense barbarity. To smoke out the Resistance fundraiser, the Japanese military begin razing villages, killing the men and raping the women, even going so far as to shoot small children for sport. When veteran Resistance fighter Hae-cheol (Yoo Hae-jin) raids a command post, he makes a point of taking a hostage who himself seems to be a teenage recruit. Hae-cheol lets the boy live not only out of a sense of compassion, but also because he wants him to take what he’s seen back to Japan, including the aftermath of a Japanese assault on an ordinary Korean village.

Yukio (Kotaro Daigo), as the boy later gives his name, is, unlike his fellow officers, conflicted and confused. Apparently a member of the elite himself, the son of a prominent military figure, Yukio gave up a bright academic future to join the army and find out what it is that Japan does with its advanced weaponry. Asked what he thinks now that he’s seen for himself, he says that he’s ashamed, that his worst fears have been confirmed. According to Yukio, his nation is suffering from an intense inferiority complex which is leading it to commit acts of extreme barbarity in order convince itself it is equal to any other imperial power.

The Japanese officers veer from the crazed, bloodthirsty Yasukawa who views his mission as some kind of hunting expedition, to the merely weak and cowardly. The Independence fighters, however, come from all over Korea speaking many dialects (some less mutually intelligible than others) and with many different motivations but all with the desire to free their country from Japanese oppression. Ace captain Jang-ha (Ryu Jun-yeol) is a born soldier, but those who support him are largely street fighters and “bandits” not always welcomed into the movement by the so-called intellectual “nobles” running the show from a position of social superiority. Then again, as Hae-cheol puts it, no one can be sure how many guerrilla soldiers there are because any farmer is a potential sleeper agent.

In any case, the Resistance fighters pursue their mission selflessly, manipulating the complacent Japanese troops to lure them into a mass ambush while trying to ensure the money still makes its way to Shanghai to preserve the movement. Despite the “Roar to Victory” subtitle, it’s important to note that the Independence Movement was still in a nascent state and would continue opposing Japanese oppression until Korea’s liberation at the end of the war. Covering the legendary battle of Battle of Fengwudong, the film ends with forward motion as the Resistance commander (a late and great cameo from a giant of Korean cinema) points ahead towards the next target, the well known Battle of Cheongsanri, in which the Japanese military reportedly suffered over 1200 casualties at the hands of Independence forces. Overly gory and lacking in subtlety, The Battle: Roar to Victory is unabashedly patriotic but does its best to suggest the costs and compromises of guerrilla warfare as its selfless heroes put aside their differences to fight for a better Korea.

The Battle: Roar to Victory was screened as part of the 2019 London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j__4TEyzxI

Intimate Strangers (완벽한 타인, Lee Jae-kyoo, 2018)

Posted on by 1 Comment

Intimate Strangers poster 1Middle-aged malaise and technophobia collide with potentially catastrophic consequences in brutal comedy of manners Intimate Strangers (완벽한 타인, Wanbyeokhan Tain). The hugely popular Italian film Perfetti Sconosciuti has already been remade in several territories, proving the universality of its conceit. The Korean edition, cleaving closely to the original, demonstrates once again that nowhere is safe in the modern wired world where public and private personas are beginning to blur as lives lived online become realer than real.

The action takes place (almost) entirely within a swanky Seoul apartment owned by plastic surgeon Seok-ho (Cho Jin-woong) and his psychiatrist wife Ye-jin (Kim Ji-soo). The couple, along with their teenage daughter (Ji Woo), have been living in the apartment for some time but haven’t gotten around to inviting their dearest friends so this evening’s celebration will be something like a belated housewarming. The other guests will be friends of Seok-ho’s from all the way back in elementary school – elite lawyer Tae-soo (Yoo Hae-jin) and his wife Soo-hyun (Yum Jung-ah), “entrepreneur” Joon-mo (Lee Seo-jin) and his much younger wife Se-kyung (Song Ha-yoon), and recently divorced Young-bae (Yoon Kyung-ho) who is supposed to be bringing his new girlfriend, but disappoints everyone by turning up alone. Part way through the evening, Ye-jin suggests a kind of party game in which they’ll all put their phones face up on the table and agree to share any messages or calls that come in. Of course, this is a game you can’t afford to refuse to play lest everyone think you’ve something to hide, but total honesty is not always advisable even amongst friends.

Despite their supposed intimacy built up over a couple of decades of similar evenings and get togethers, everyone is very much in public mode and maintaining appropriate levels of decorum. Which is why Tae-soo and Soo-hyun are at great pains to hide the fact their relationship is at breaking point thanks to the recent arrival of Tae-soo’s mother while Ye-jin and Seok-ho also have obvious problems, especially when it comes to the upbringing of their teenage daughter. Despite being a psychiatrist with full knowledge of boundaries and the harm that can be done crossing them, Ye-jin has been going through her daughter’s things and not liking what she finds. Nevertheless, everyone wants to have a pleasant evening, so the fights are on hold and politeness very much in the ascendent.

And then the phones start ringing. It might be a matter of debate exactly how much privacy one should want or expect in a marriage, with friends, or from the world in general, but everyone has something or other they’d rather wasn’t brought up at a dinner party and so showcasing one’s phone is likely to be quite a bad idea. That might be the attraction of the game, but no one seriously wants marital breakdown across the dinner table, nor do they want to hear about medical procedures, outings they weren’t invited to, workplace drama, or familial strife.

The messages, as pregnant with melodrama as they might be, begin to expose the simmering conflicts between this now disparate group of “friends”. The petty class resentments and awkward political differences that politeness sees fit to gloss over become harder to ignore when flashed up by an inconvenient notification or a call the other party is not aware is being broadcast (breaching their privacy too in the process). Realising secrets have been kept from you can be hurtful, but it’s even worse realising that you disappoint yourself in proving exactly why the secret was kept in the first place.

It’s tempting to blame everything on technology, that if no one had a phone no one would be hurt but the truth is that married or not everyone has a right to their secrets and a separate, individual life to which no one but themselves is privy. Perhaps it isn’t so much lies which are the enemy, but the expectation of intimacy and that sharing your life with someone necessarily means the entirety of it. In any case, the film (like the other incarnations) opts for an ironic ending which undoes everything which had gone before, erasing the awkwardness of exposed secrets with a return to a more comfortable reality in which everyone is superficially happier pretending to be happy in blissful ignorance. Perhaps sometimes it really is better not to ask too many questions.

Intimate Strangers was screened as part of the 2019 Udine Far East Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Love+Sling (레슬러, Kim Dae-woong, 2018)

Posted on by Leave a comment

Love+Sling poster“Free yourself!” cries the oblivious father at the centre of Kim Dae-woong’s wrestling themed family comedy, Love+Sling (레슬러, Lesseulleo). In truth, this is wrestling of the emotional rather than the physical kind as the closeness of a father and son comes under pressure not only from advancing maturity but the unexpected intervention of the girl next door. Vicarious dreams, generational resentments, unusual sensitivity, unaddressed trauma, and self-imposed limitations all come into play when age and youth lock horns, each hoping to come out on top but eventually being knocked back to a healthier place of personal equality born of mutual understanding.

Cheerful widower Gui-bo (Yoo Hae-jin) and his son Sung-woong (Kim Min-jae) have an extremely close relationship seeing as it’s just been the two of them since Gui-bo’s wife passed away from illness when Sung-woong was small. By way of support, they are also extremely friendly with their upstairs neighbours whom they think of as extended family. In his youth, Gui-bo was a champion wrestler with Olympic dreams which he gave up to become a family man but has now passed on to Sung-woong whom he is training to become a national athlete. Meanwhile, Sung-woong is nursing a small crush on girl next door Ga-young (Lee Sung-kyung) but his plans of confessing his love after winning the big contest are dashed when she makes a big confession of her own. She’s long been carrying a torch for Gui-bo and wants Sung-woong to help her win him over.

Ga-young’s awkward confession sets off a series of uncomfortable reactions in Sung-woong. First of all he’s understandably shocked, jealous, and resentful yet also forced to realise that Ga-young’s having a crush on him is not really his father’s fault. The extremely close relationship they’d always enjoyed becomes strained for reasons that Gui-bo is unable to understand, believing that his son is just at a difficult age and under a lot of pressure thanks to his training. Gui-bo still thinks of Ga-young as the little girl from next door and is in no way romantically interested in her though when he finally learns of her intentions, he tries to do his best not to hurt her feelings, letting her down gently in the knowledge that this kind of misplaced love is just a part of growing up that she will someday likely be very embarrassed about.

Nevertheless, Sung-woong does not enjoy thinking of his own father as a romantic rival and is forced is to reassess the rest of their relationship in the face of this disturbing fact. Sung-woong can’t remember if he wrestles because he likes it, or he only did it to make his dad happy. Gui-bo insists he only encouraged his son to wrestle because he enjoyed it, but there is an unavoidable implication that he’s forced his own failed dreams onto the shoulders of his son who risks disappointing him if he is unable to achieve them. Sung-woong can’t help but resent the unfair parental expectations he’s lived under his all life, not least because they leave him uncertain, never really knowing if he has a dream of his own or has been prevented from forming one in having lived such a blinkered existence.

The burden of parental expectation is not one that can be easily shaken off. Middle-aged father Gui-bo is still under constant pressure from his own mother to remarry despite his frequent protestations. In a painful conversation after an argument with Sung-woong, Gui-bo turns to his mother to muse on the difficulties of raising a child only for her turn his words back on him in another veiled criticism of his refusal to conform to her vision of a successful future. Lamenting that his mother never listens, Gui-bo attempts to talk to his son but makes exactly the same mistake and gets his own words thrown back at him, finally realising he is no better and is incapable of allowing Sung-woong a safe space to voice his concerns without launching into a mini lecture of self-centred and unsolicited life advice.

Sung-woong’s increasing resentment threatens to tank not only his relationship with his father but also Ga-young’s with her family and the easiness that had existed between the two houses. Father and son had been all too close, locked in a mutually dependent cycle of filial responsibilities that threatened to prevent either of them ever moving forward. Like a wrestler trapped on the mat, each man has to free himself by accepting his own individual identity while allowing others to do the same. Only by a literal grappling can each man find the strength to release the other so that they might both regain the freedom to become the most authentic versions of themselves. A gentle, empathetic take on family mores and the pains of growing up no matter what age you are, Love+Sling finds space for the changing nature of a paternal bond which does not so much break as bend under the weight of mutual recognition.

Love+Sling was screened as part of the 2018 London Korean Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

1987: When the Day Comes (1987, Jang Joon-hwan, 2017)

Posted on by 2 Comments

fullsizephoto931939The political history of Korea is long and complex and oftentimes sad. The events depicted in 1987: When the Day Comes (1987), pivotal as they were, occurred just 30 years ago. Yet the recent past has also been one marked by protest, public anger, and political scandal though this time around with far less fear or danger. The protests of 1987 were a different story. The rule of Chun Doo-hwan, a military dictator who had seized power following the assassination of the previous dictator, Park Chung-hee, was one of extreme oppression which had already seen a widespread massacre of peaceful protestors by the state in Gwangju in 1980. Chun’s term, under the constitution, was set at seven years after which many hoped for a path to modern democracy but those hopes were dashed when he announced an intention to appoint his successor rather than call a free and fair election.

In depicting the climactic events of that summer, Jang Joon-hwan begins with chaos as a doctor is summoned to a mysterious room where a young man lies unconscious in a pool of water. The police have gone too far, and boy has died during interrogation. Aware of the potential danger of the public finding out that the state has in effect murdered a suspect in an act of torture, the head of the ACIB, Park (Kim Yun-seok), orders the body to be quickly cremated. This, however, needs a certificate signed by a prosecutor and Prosecutor Choi (Ha Jung-woo) is fed up with the ACIB and unwilling to cooperate especially as he smells a rat with the cause of death for a healthy 22-year-old listed as a “heart attack”. Not wanting to be on the wrong side of it if it does get out, Choi refuses the cremation and orders an autopsy which in itself triggers a series of other events eventually bringing the government to its knees.

The state remains cruel and duplicitous. The death of Park Jong-chul (Yeo Jin-goo) would become a catalyst and a rallying call, not just for the injustice of it but for the injustice of covering it up. Park’s family are denied their basic rights, his mother and sister literally dragged away from the morgue screaming while his traumatised father looks on in silent agony. They say that Park was a communist, that he died of fear because he weak while claiming all along to have done no wrong. Only when the “truth” begins to emerge does the ACIB decide to hang a few of its guys out to dry, urging them to “patriotically” take one for the team and head to prison for a while with a hefty compensation package to help sweeten the deal.

The death in custody becomes just one event in a situation spiralling out of control. Paranoid in the extreme, the Chun regime is also working on bringing down a “North Korean Spy Network” controlled by a democracy activist on the run who, unbeknownst to them, is also working with the Catholic Church who will eventually prove pivotal in delivering the truth to the people. Meanwhile, the press has also decided to jump ship, ignoring the government’s carefully crafted guidelines in favour of running actual news. Chun’s iron grip is slipping.

Jang’s biggest takeaway is that corrupt regimes crumble when enough people find the strength to go on saying no. It begins with Choi refusing to stamp a certificate then travels to the reporter who won’t back down, passes on to the secret revolutionaries bravely carrying messages at great personal costs, the not so secret clergy who perhaps have more protection to speak their minds (up to a point) than most, and of course the students in the streets who risked their lives to build a better future. One of the few completely fictional characters, the niece (Kim Tae-ri) of a prison guard (Yu Hae-jin) charged with conveying messages to an activist in hiding, proves the most illuminating in her inward struggle towards the democratisation movement. Afraid of the consequences and preferring to remain politically apathetic, she is eventually radicalised through witnessing the brutality of the regime first hand and suffering personal loss because of it.

Playing out as a taut thriller, 1987: When the Day Comes has a lived in authenticity from the motif of being constantly deprived of one shoe by a cruel and absurd regime to the deadly serious ridiculousness of men like Park who hate “the enemy” enough to destroy the thing they claim to love in pursuit of it. Timely and filled with melancholy nostalgia, Jang’s depiction of the pivotal events of 30 years ago is also a rallying cry in itself and an important reminder that the fight for justice is never truly won.

Screened at the 20th Udine Far East Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

A Taxi Driver (택시 운전사, Jang Hoon, 2017)

Posted on by 1 Comment

A Taxi Driver PosterIn these (generally) well connected days of mass communication when every major event is live broadcast to the world at large, it’s difficult to remember a time when dreadful things might be happening the next town over yet no one knows (or perhaps dares to ask). Until 1979, Korea had been under the control of an oppressive dictatorship which was brought to a sudden and bloody end by the murder of the president, Park Chung-hee, at the hands of one of his aides. Though the democracy movement had been growing, hopes of installing a modern governmental system were dashed with the accession of the de facto president, General Chun Doo-hwan, who reinstated martial law, placing troops on the streets on the pretext of a possible North Korean invasion. In an event known as the Gwanjgu Uprising, a long term peaceful protest led by the area’s large student population was brutally suppressed with large numbers dead or wounded by government soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Seoul, regular Joe taxi driver Kim Man-seob (Song Kang-ho) is trying to go about his everyday business and is finding all of this protesting very irritating, especially when he is forced to swerve to avoid a young man running from riot police and breaks the wing mirror on his otherwise pristine vehicle. Man-seob thinks these kids don’t know they’re born, if they’d spent time abroad like he did in Saudi Arabia, they’d know that few places are quite as nice as Korea. A single father raising his young daughter alone, Man-seob’s major worry is money. He’s four months behind on his rent and his daughter keeps getting into fights with the landlord’s son. Actually, the rent might not be such a pressing problem seeing as Man-seob’s landlord is a close friend and colleague – close enough for him to cheekily ask to borrow the money to “pay” him so his friend’s wife will stop being so mean. When he overhears another driver boasting that he’s picked up an improbably large fare that’s exactly the same amount as the money Man-seob owes, Man-seob bluffs his way into stealing it out from under him. Man-seob, however, has not stopped to consider why a foreigner wants to pay him an insane amount of money to drive from Seoul to provincial Gwangju.

Like many in the Korea of 1980, Man-seob is a man just trying to get by. He has his private sorrows, but largely avoids thinking about the big picture. To him, the Seoul protest movement has become such a normal inconvenience that he keeps cream in his car to help cope with the smell of the smoke bombs. He thinks all of this rancour is just kids out of control and will eventually blow over when order is restored.

Others feel differently. A BBC journalist relocated from Korea to Tokyo describes the situation as “tense” and avows that this time something may be about to break. Tokyo in 1980 is a nice place to live, but extremely boring if you’re an international journalist and so German reporter Peter (Thomas Kretschmann) catches the next flight out with the intention of investigating the rumours of state sponsored violence coming out Gwangju.

Though Man-seob’s original motivation is the money, the events he witnesses in Gwangju have a profound effect on the way he sees his country. Bypassing roadblocks and sneaking into a city under lockdown, Man-seob and Peter witness acts of extreme violence as the army deploys smoke grenades, beatings, and bullets on a peaceful assembly of ordinary people. Prior to the military’s intervention, the atmosphere is joyful and welcoming. The people of Gwangju dance and sing, share meals with each other, and all are excited about the idea of real social change. This juxtaposition of joy and kindness with such brutal and uncompromising cruelty eventually awakens Man-seob’s wider consciousness, forcing him to rethink some early advice he gave to his daughter concerning her difficult relationship with the little boy next-door to the effect that non-reaction is often the best reaction.

Rather than focus on the Uprising itself, Jang presents it at ground level through the eyes of the previously blind Man-seob and the jaded Peter. Inspired by real events though heavily fictionalised (despite a search which continued until his death, Peter was never able to discover the true identity of the taxi driver who had helped him), A Taxi Driver (택시 운전사, Taxi Woonjunsa) is a testament to the everyman’s historical importance which, even if occasionally contrived, speaks with a quiet power in the gradual reawakening of a self-centred man’s sense of honour and personal responsibility.

A Taxi Driver was screened as the sixth teaser for the upcoming London Korean Film Festival 2017. Tickets for the next and final film, The Villainess which screens along with the official programme launch at Regent Street Cinema on 11th September, are on sale now.

Original trailer (English subtitles)