Review: THE BEAUTY INSIDE, High Concept Melo Is as Glib as Its Title

By Pierce Conran

A corporate-sponsored high concept web series gets the glossy Korean melodrama treatment in The Beauty Inside, top romantic offering of summer 2015. Featuring a laundry list of Korean stars all playing the same character, this debut film by music video director Baik stays very true to its source material, while also expanding it with familiar local melodramatic elements.

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Busan 2017 Review: HOME Settles in for Pleasant if Predictable Family Drama

By Pierce Conran

Busan-set family melodrama Home doesn't stray from stock themes of Korean dramas yet its endearing young cast and genuine feelings make it a pleasant debut from newcomer Kim Jong-woo.

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Busan 2015 Review: RECORDING Chronicles Charming Cast In Forgettable Story

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

It’s the small moments that work in Recording, a story that is low on ambition but infused with a winning charm even as it drags in the scripting department, particularly in the back half. Sweet and unaffected, Park Min-kook’s debut follows a woman in her early 20s who chronicles her losing battle to stomach cancer with an omnipresent home camera. Even with the end drawing near, she continues to wear a bright smile and tries to spend some of her last carefree moments with her partner and friends.

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Review: ODE TO MY FATHER Puts Blockbuster Spin On Melodrama

By Pierce Conran

Family takes centre stage in Ode to My Father, a new Korean melodrama that is every bit as bombastic as this year's naval battle hit Roaring Currents. Directed by JK Youn (Youn Je-kyun), whose last film Haeundae sauntered over the 10 million admissions barrier in 2009, this new epic drama proves to be an expert balance of scale and intimacy that will surely find a huge audience at home.

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Man on the Edge (박수건달, Baksoogeondal) 2012

The gangster comedy, once one the biggest money-spinners in the Korean film industry, has fallen out of favor recently. Truth is, most high concept comedies struggle in the Korean marketplace these days. Yet for many years they were the king of the charts. In 2001, the gangster comedies Kick the Moon, My Wife Is a Gangster, Hi Dharma and My Boss My Hero, as well as Jang Jin’s hitman comedy Guns & Talk, all featured among the year’s top seven films. A year later, the first entry in the Marrying the Mafia franchise (which would spawn five installments) rode its way to the top of the chart.

What is it about the mix between gangsters and comedy (frequently romantic comedy) that has so enticed Korean viewers? Narratives featuring organized crime have always been popular the world-over and things are certainly no different here. However, in a male-driven country dominated by social hierarchy, it could be that the infantilization of these hoodlums was a welcome source of respite within the safe confines of the country’s multiplexes. In any case this clever piece of genre hybridity burned bright for a number of years before suffering increasingly diminishing returns. A few months ago, the final installment in the Marrying the Mafia franchise failed to attract over a million viewers, demonstrating that the format was running on empty.

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A Good Rain Knows (호우시절, Howoo shijeol) 2009

By Rex Baylon

What do you do when a filmmaker you respect and champion begins to make works that you dislike? Do you unabashedly support it and ignore the work’s inherent flaws? Do you ignore the work, pretend to suffer from cinephilic amnesia and hope that the offending film will fall through the cracks of time and be mercifully forgotten? Or do you finally sit down and deal with the fact that people, no less filmmakers, are imperfect artisans and that although our initial response to their work may have been unabashed excitement, it must be tempered and we must attempt to look at each new work free from the distractions of the past.

Having begun life as part of a three-part omnibus film entitled Chengdu, I Love You (2009) with contributions by Chinese filmmaker Cu Jian and Hong Kong auteur Fruit Chan. Hur Jin-ho’s A Good Rain Knows (2009) evolved out of that project and became its own feature. Being a Pan-Asian production Hur cast Korean superstar Jung Woo-sung, fresh off the production of Kim Jee-won’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), to play the poet-turned-businessman Park Dong-ha and Mainland Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan, who worked on the controversial Lu Chuan picture City of Life and Death (2009) that same year, was cast as May, Dong-ha’s melancholic love interest.

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Architecture 101 (건축학개론, Geonchukhakgaeron) 2012

By Rex Baylon

Woe to all the young lovers around the world. In the arena of melodrama there seems to be no greater sin than to be young and in love. And within the confines of Korean film, a national cinema that relishes in using sickness, war, class conflicts and all manner of other obstacles great and small to keep its young lovers apart, the cinematic landscape is littered with countless failed and stillborn romances that have withered on the vine due to masculine pride or the natural process of time. The trauma brought on by these failed first time affairs of the heart reverberate all the way to adulthood with failed marriages, arrested development, and emotionally vacant characters being familiar tropes within the Korean romance genre.

After dabbling in the eerie atmosphere that is K-Horror with the supernatural thriller Possessed (Bulsinjiok, 2009), architect-turned-filmmaker Lee Yong-ju was back in the spotlight in 2012 with his new project Architecture 101. Revolving around the complicated relationship between an architect, Seung-min, played by Uhm Tae-woong, and his first love, Seo-yeon (Han Ga-in). Lee’s sophomore feature uses a split narrative focusing half the story in the not-so-distant past, where the two lovers of our story first meet and subsequently fall in love, and the present day where, for reasons not yet made aware to us, Seung-min and Seo-yeon have drifted apart and are no longer together. Commissioned by Seo-yeon to design a new home for her on Jeju island, Architecture 101 follows the same story beats that countless Hallyu love stories have followed since Hur Jin-ho’s masterpiece Christmas in August (1998).

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KOFFIA 2012: Late Blossom (그대를 사랑합니다, Geu-dae-leul Sa-rang-hab-ni-da) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 3rd Korean Film Festival in Australia (previously published).

It’s easy to forget sometimes how rigid the rules can be concerning the technical aspects behind the making of a film.  When done right, everything you see on screen (or hear) is exactly so for a reason.  The rich tapestry of mise-en-scene (basically everything but the dialogue) captures our attention by cleverly drawing us to certain pieces of information.  Through cinematography, sound, production design, costumes, and editing it seeks to tell us a story.  It is the difference between a novel, in which we must imagine all these details, and a film, which seeks to show us a world conceived by its filmmakers.

If you take the time to consider what shots are used in a film, you can see (most of the time) a reason behind their selection.  These little parcels of visual information tell part of the narrative.  There are many choices a director or cinematographer can make when framing a shot and each of these decisions will affect how the story is told.  An example of this is from what angle to frame a character: you can shoot from above, from below, or straight on.  In Late Blossom, which features some exceptional photography, this choice is an important one.  It says a lot about how the film views its characters, the majority of which are senior citizens. 

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KOFA Treasures: Lee Doo-yong's The Oldest Son (장남, Jangnam) 1984

Ongoing series on classic Korean film recently made available for free and with English subtitles on Youtube courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.

I can find something to like in just about any Korean film, even some that are frankly terrible, such as last year’s Marrying the Mafia IV, but there are some that I simply can’t abide.  For the most part, the culprits tend to originate from the same genre: the family melodrama.  Granted, there are numerous exceptional Korean melodramas but by force of there being so many, the ones that scrape the bottom of the barrel are remarkably turgid and torpid, judging by any standard.  A recent example is The Last Blossom (2011), which I patiently suffered through despite almost boiling over with rage as a result of its manipulative machinations.

While these films generally aren’t big revenue drivers, many of them still go into production and are brought to us by the hands of hackneyed talent.  Sometimes, as I watch these films, I ask myself: why do they exist?  What led us to this point?  While melodrama is typically the main form of entertainment in Korea, it seemed to me that these particular films are leftovers from a derelict sector of production, which ambles on, quietly churning out these hollow and shallow features.  Naturally, the next piece of the puzzle was to identify and seek out what had come before.

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Champ (Chaem-peu) 2011

Dancing, snow, and horses, what's not to like?

The last Korean horse-racing themed picture to come our way was last year’s woeful Kim Tae-hee vehicle Grand Prix, which I savaged when I reviewed it a few months ago.  2011 has seen fit to grace us with a new equine melodrama in Champ, which was a little more successful (though not a hit) and features decent pedigree with a cast comprising Cha Tae-hyun, Yu Oh-seung, Kim Sang-ho, and Baek Yoon-shik (in a brief role).  Though I wasn’t expecting much, as the film seemed quite melodramatic and cloying, I was cautiously optimistic that I was sitting down to a decent film.  That fanciful notion was torn asunder nearly as quickly as the light of the first frame reached my iris.  Dare I say it, Champ might even be worse than Grand Prix, though it is a close photo-finish race for last place.

The conceit of Champ is straightforward but nonetheless predictable and contrived.  Seung-ho (Cha Tae-hyun) is a successful jockey but after a car accident leaves him injured and a widow, he is unable to work.  Things take a turn for the worse when he borrows money from the wrong people and he goes on the run with his daughter, ending up on Jeju island at a stable for training mounted police.  Horse trainer Yoon is the man who drove the other vehicle in the crash all those years ago.  He was driving a horse, who was injured, and its foal, who died.  Since then the damaged horse has been unrideable and now both she and Seung-ho will attempt to make it back to the race track.

To the rescue!

Given how filmmakers present them to us, we tend to anthropomorphize animals in films, that is to say we apply human characteristics to them.  It’s quite a natural thing to do and, while a little cynical to say so, it functions as a projection of our narcissism.  Animals are an effective tool in narratives because aside from the human elements that are imbued into their characteristics, they can almost always be viewed as innocent.  Combined, these features are a potent formula for empathy but, sadly, extremely prone to manipulation and sentimentality.  They work best in the realm of animation, as you can get away with just about anything when you have ample suspension of disbelief.  In live action films however, you take a gamble every time you incorporate an animal who acts like a human, the only exception is talking animals as they, like in animation, suggest a world that we could not possibly live in.

We are lead to believe that the horse is mourning the death of its foal, years after the fact, this of course mirrors the death of Seung-ho’s wife.  As unlikely a proposition as that sounds, I could just about swallow it but shortly thereafter, the horse saved Seung-ho from drowning in a stupefying underwater sequence.  Later still, the horse nods in the affirmative at one of its trainer’s questions.  Perhaps these elements could have found a place in a broad comedy but make no mistake, despite a few attempts at lame humour, Champ is a melodrama on steroids.

Waste of talent: Baek Yoon-shik, Cha Tae-hyun, and Kim Sang-ho

Despite what seems like a strong cast, the performances in the film leave much to be desired.  Aside from on early sequence where Seung-ho and his daughter pretend to be sports announcers as they watch a horse race on TV, Cha Tae-hyun is never given a chance to show off his skills as an energetic, fast-talking comedian, instead he wanders around depressed and puts on a stupid grin every so often.  Kim Sang-ho, who really impressed me in this year’s Moby Dick and the K-Drama City Hunter, becomes a nuisance very quickly as he hams it up and throws himself around with his repetitive pratfalls.  Oh Yu-seong may not be a top flight actor, but he was a strong presence in films like Beat (1997) and Friend (2001), here he is simply miscast, he’s too dry and has no comic timing.  Most insufferable of all, just like in Grand Prix, is the little girl who wails throughout most of this lengthy punishment of a film.  It’s not cute crying either, her protracted ear-piercing shrieks are so devastating, that they seem to carry through to other scenes.

Add in a few too many sideshows with low-level gangsters, gamblers, rival jockeys, mounted police, and corrupt businessman as well as the cringe-inducing impromptu dancing and all of the above and you’re left with a 133-minute exercise in endurance that I strongly suggest you stay well away from.  Aside from the underwater rescue sequence and a handful of other brief ludicrously bad moments, Champ doesn’t even fit into the so-bad-it’s-good category.  It’s just dull and annoying.

Incessant wailing

Frankly, what was I expecting?  Unlike other sports such as boxing and baseball, horse-racing has not really had an illustrious history of representation on screen.  In recent memory there was 2003’s Oscar-bait against-the-odds based-on-a-true-story Seabiscuit, which almost made me want to throw myself under a galloping horse.  Last year, Disney tries a similar gambit with Secretariat, which, though I had an opportunity to see it before its release, I couldn’t bring myself to sit through.  The best films featuring the racetrack typically focus away from the action happening on it like the anarchic brilliance of the Marx Brothers classic A Day at the Races (1937) or Kubrick’s dark early caper The Killing (1956).  While of late Korea may have blighted the relatively small crop of horse-racing films on offer, US premium cable channel HBO may have found an answer in Luck, a racetrack drama with a myriad of characters from Deadwood creator David Milch which will begin to air in January.  I was lucky enough to see the pilot, directed by Michael Mann, this past summer and though it was an early cut, it was phenomenal and may give this sub-genre a reason to exist in future.

Horse race or moonwalk?

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Late Blossom (Geu-dae-leul Sa-rang-hab-ni-da) 2011

It’s easy to forget sometimes how rigid the rules can be concerning the technical aspects behind the making of a film.  When done right, everything you see on screen (or hear) is exactly so for a reason.  The rich tapestry of mise-en-scene (basically everything but the dialogue) captures our attention by cleverly drawing us to certain pieces of information.  Through cinematography, sound, production design, costumes, and editing it seeks to tell us a story.  It is the difference between a novel, in which we must imagine all these details, and a film, which seeks to show us a world conceived by its filmmakers.

Beautiful, intimate framing

If you take the time to consider what shots are used in a film, you can see (most of the time) a reason behind their selection.  These little parcels of visual information tell part of the narrative.  There are many choices a director or cinematographer can make when framing a shot and each of these decisions will affect how the story is told.  An example of this is from what angle to frame a character: you can shoot from above, from below, or straight on.  In Late Blossom, which features some exceptional photography, this choice is an important one.  It says a lot about how the film views its characters, the majority of which are senior citizens. 

Shooting from high up makes a person look smaller and can infer that he or she is timid, lacking in confidence, or occupying a lower social strata.  Conversely, low-angle shots make characters look dominant, authoritative, or heroic.  Late Blossom’s principal protagonists are frequently filmed from low angles.  In this instance, the choice is a mark of respect, as the films seeks to venerate its elderly characters.  Here, the formal structure of the film and its choices echoes the rigid framework of a hierarchical society, although perhaps one that steadily shying away from its outmoded confucian values.

Man-suk (Lee Soon-jae) shot from below

At a time for Korea when things are rapidly changing and its film industry manifests the latest trends and embraces the newest fads, Late Blossom is something of an anomaly.  Its focus is on a way of life that is being passed over for  globalized cosmopolitanism.  It is fixated on the present but only because it has allowed the past to be forgottten.  The characters who we follow live in the world’s second largest metropolis, yet they seem alone and abandonned.  The rapidly-evolving society which they inhabit no longer has any space for them, but still they live on, foraging in the modern urban landscape.

Late Blossom follows the lives of four elderly people in a rundown neighbourhood in Seoul.  Kim Man-suk (Lee Soon-jae) delivers milk and crosses Ms. Song (Yoon So-jeong), who scrapes by by selling scrap paper.  They feel something towards one another and gradually seek respite from the loneliness of their lives.  Meanwhile, Jang Kun-bong (Sung Jae-ho) takes care of wife (Kim Soo-mi) who suffers from dementia.

Snow adds depth to some scenes

Rather than follow a plot-based path, the narrative invites us into the lives of its four protagonists as they struggle to live in modern Seoul.  The film is meditative, sweet, and enormously rewarding.  It is also deceptively simple.  One of those examples of something that seems perfectly effortless while in actuality demonstrating an enormous amount of skill, attention to detail, and artistry.

Aside from visual metaphors (such as pathetic fallacy) and social awareness, Late Blossom succeeds in the technical department. It features some of the most wonderful camerawork I’ve seen all year.  While the lensing is clearly beautiful, it is also intelligent, each shot has a purpose and advance our integration into the story.  One particularly pleasing element of the cinematography were the scenes with snow.  As the snowflakes drift across the urban landscape, those that come closest to camera float by as large out-of-focus white dots.  It’s very engrossing and adds a huge amount of depth to the world we are invited to discover.  You may also notice how some of the younger characters are framed looking down on the elders from a high vantage point, as if peering quizzically on those that have laid the foundation for their progress.

Younger characters look down on elders

The film begins as we follow Man-suk on his scooter doing his early morning routine.  The first time we see his face is from behind a gate.  In effect we are spying on him.  Their is a tacit acknowledgment, on the part of the filmmakers, of the scopophilia that we the audience must naturally engage in as we invade the private lives of the protagonists.  Rather than immediately launch into close-ups, for a long time we see everything that unfolds from a distance.  The effect of peering in is reinforced by the landscape of the neighbourhood.  The composition of the shots reflects the sinuous roads and paths as they wind their way up and down hills.  This style of shooting becomes very intimate when we follow the characters through the ordered chaos of their local society. The location is very much a part of the story, it is omnipresent as Man-suk and Ms. Song make their living traveling its streets.

Many themes are explored during the film, mostly examing how society ha changed in its treatment of elders.  In one sequence, Song visits the civic office where Man-suk’s daughter works to register for an identity.  She is excessively grateful and obsequious in towards its young employees, a reminder of a bygone era when an autocratic administration ruled with an iron fist.  Conversely, the youthful staff are pleasantly surprised to be treated so respectfully and reciprocate by expediting her needs.  While this may be a sign of positive change, representing the evolution of authority in modern Korea, it also alludes to the fact that people are often less than gracious when dealing with civil matters in modern society.  You may also notice certain compositions in the film which place younger characters looking down on the elder protagonists from higher vantage points.  They have moved forward, or up, with time and peer down almost quizzically at those who paved the way for them.  What is the difference between respecting authority and respecting your elders?

Kun-bong and his wife, Man-suk and Ms. Song look on

The anchor of the film is its great lead performers.  Lee Soon-jae, Yoon So-jeong, Sung Jae-ho, and Kim Soo-mi are all fantastic.  It is impossible not to feel all their joy, disappointment, and heartache.  It is as if it were your own.  I was completely taken in by Late Blossom, especially by it’s fantastic leads, involving mise-en-scene, and infectious sweetness.  All but the coldest hearts will be melted by it.


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.