Review: LITTLE FOREST Will Have You Yearning for the Simple Life

By Pierce Conran

In Korean cinema, when characters retreat to the countryside things generally don't work out too well for them, but in Yim Soon-rye's new drama Little Forest, a young woman regains her spirit, and as she does so, many viewers will leave the theater with a desire for the simple life. This adaptation of a popular Japanese manga (already adapted into a two-part Japanese film) gives Kim Tae-ri her first lead role since her breakout part in Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden and offers a distinct Korean flavor in what is a cinematic love letter to 'slow living'.

Click to read more»

Review: WAIKIKI BROTHERS, A True Korean Classic

By Pierce Conran

Yim Soonrye could lay claim to being the first female director to forge a lasting career in the Korean film industry. Indeed, she has one of the most varied filmographies among current filmmakers, yet ironically, or perhaps necessarily, she rose to prominence by making a pair of films that explored Korean masculinity far more successfully than the majority of her male contemporaries. 14 years on, her second feature Waikiki Brothers (2001) stands up as one of the best works of contemporary Korean cinema. Though the movement is generally considered to have ended with Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy in 1999, it’s also a film that could easily be included among the best of the Korean New Wave. 

Click to read more»

Review: Kim Yun-seok on Form in SOUTH BOUND

By Pierce Conran

Normally, when a Korean film's characters decamp to the countryside, we can expect terrible things to happen. But Yim Soon-rye's new film offers a refreshing take on this standard formula. While bad things also befall the characters in South Bound, there's a welcome levity to the proceedings.

A family man decides to move his family to an island when life under the finger of the government becomes too much for him. He smashes CCTV cameras in his neighborhood, refuses to have his fingers printed at the police station (during one of his many visits), and thumbs his nose at politicians. Along with his wife and his two youngest children, he moves to a small island off the southern coast to begin a new life in a dilapidated hut, free from the shackles of oppression.

Click to read more»