Review: The Past is Present in Lee Yoon-ki's THIS CHARMING GIRL

By Rex Baylon

We love to watch. It’s impossible to deny that fact as advances in technology has made people-watching a popular guilty pleasure. As more and more of our gadgets and software are built to not only connect everyone but also document every banal detail of our lives, it’s become quite easy to learn everything about someone without every meeting them face-to-face. In the realm of cinema, the concept of voyeurism has always been a popular topic for filmmakers. Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Powell and many others have devoted entire films or, in rare cases, entire careers to utilizing voyeuristic techniques to arrive at some sort of truth.

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News: Jeon Do-yeon And Kim Yoon-seok In Talks for New Lee Yoon-ki Film

By Rex Baylon

For those Korean film fans that have an affinity for quiet settings and slightly damaged female characters, the films of Lee Yoon-ki have acted as cinematic catnip. Having made a reputation for himself in the film festival circuit for Rohmerian style dramas featuring female protagonists muted by some tragic event in the past the director has been off the radar since 2011 after the release of his fourth feature, Come Rain Come Shine. There have been various rumors about forthcoming projects and though none have added up to much news has surfaced that award-winning actress Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine, 2007; Happy End, 1999) and superstar Kim Yoon-seok (Thieves, 2012; The Chaser, 2008) are in talks to star in Lee’s fifth feature, titled A Man and a Woman.

Produced by b.o.m Film with an agreement by CJ Entertainment to distribute the finished picture, the new project would reunite Lee with Jeon after their 2008 collaboration My Dear Enemy, which played at several festivals around the world and became a critical darling. The only thing confirmed about the script is that the film will focus on the passionate relationship of middle-aged lovers. Of course, all this pondering on the plot will be moot if the two actors can’t reach an agreement with Lee and the producers.

Though Jeon and Kim have shown strong interest in working with Lee on this project both actors already have full schedules this year with Jeon Do-yeon appearing with Lee Byung-heon in the period drama Memories of the Sword and Kim Yoon-seok pulling double duty on Sea Fog and the upcoming Tazza sequel.

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Whose Lie is it Anyway: Ad-lib Night (아주 특별한 손님, Aju Teukbyeolhan Sonnim) 2006

Part of Rex Baylon's ongoing feature on director Lee Yoon-ki.

The expectations placed upon us by our family can be emotionally and mentally crippling. Parents have no way to predict how there actions, no matter how well intentioned they are, will scar their kids, and children are ultimately at the mercy of circumstances outside their control or understanding. Because of this the relationship between parents and children seem to always suffer from some form of dysfunction. Be it from things said in anger or things left unsaid one doesn’t leave childhood without some scarring.

Opening on a bright summer day in Seoul, Lee Yoon-ki’s third feature Ad–lib Night (Aju Teukbyeolhan Sonnim, 2006) begins with two men arguing over the facial features of a woman standing innocently across from them. Watching them stare at her one can’t help thinking of the innumerable scenes in film of men and boys spying on women. Are they playboys, predators, or harmless peeping Toms? We soon get our answer as the two men corner the woman and begin having a conversation with her media res. They call her Myung-eun and we discover that they knew each other since grade school. She rebuffs their attempts to get close though and corrects their assumption that she is Myung-eun.

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Love in the Time of Debt: My Dear Enemy (멋진 하루, Meotjin Haru) 2008

Part of Rex Baylon's ongoing feature on director Lee Yoon-ki.

To speak about love in a contemporary real world setting and ignore the logistics of survival has been the bane of the romance genre. In order to sidestep these problems filmmakers in the past have either focused their eye to the upstairs-downstairs drama of the 1% or offered up sentimental stories of shopgirls being wooed by nebbish young suitors. Modern day romantic comedies haven’t fared any better since most are concerned with merely finding one’s true love and quickly fading out once our two lovers are finally together. The romance genre’s evolution through the years has ignored the economics of love in favor of offering up quirky characters in contrived situations.

In Lee Yoon-ki’s My Dear Enemy money is the impetus for the two ex-lovers reuniting and the reason why they spend the entire day together. Instead of cloying attempts to tell a story about two people falling in love again while draped on all sides by a scenic urban backdrop we get tense scenes where petty grudges are rehashed and even the happier moments of the past are remembered through a cloudy veneer of regret and nostalgia. Far from offering up an affected view of modern day relationships My Dear Enemy is a realistic character study of the ways that hate and love are used to mask one’s insecurities, it’s a travelogue, a visual and aural document, of Seoul at the cusp of a worldwide economic recession, and a charming romantic comedy.

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