PiFan 2014 Review: MY ORDINARY LOVE STORY Is Not Your Ordinary Rom-Com

By Pierce Conran

Expectations play a large role in how we consume and react to cinema, particularly in the commercial realm. Genre formulas are so clearcut than any deviation is immediately noticeable. Some variation is required to prevent things from getting stale but anything too jarring and you run the risk of alienating your audience. The new Korean romcom (or is it?) My Ordinary Love Story takes such a risk as it veers way off course, but this is one gamble that pays off in spades.

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PiFan 2013 - Before Sundown: Sunshine Love (2013)

Arrested development has been a very prescient theme in Western media. The man-child, geek, otaku; no matter what you call it we are living in an age where the lines between childhood and adult responsibilities have blurred. For the character of Gil-ho (Oh Jeong-se) in Jo Eun-sung’s debut feature Sunshine Love (2013), his protracted immaturity is not because of some addiction to a fantasy world, though the film is interspersed with several fantasy kung-fu sequences. No, what cripples Gil-ho is what cripples most twenty-somethings, a sense of dread as our expectations for the life we are supposed to live clashe with the reality of our situation. In the case of Gil-ho, the moment we first meet him we learn two important things about him. First, he desperately wants a position as a government bureaucrat. And second, he has failed the government exam several times already. Though an obvious change in career should be the next step for Gil-ho he seems too stubborn for this epiphany and continues on with his quest to be a civil servant.

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PiFan 2013: The Terror Live Can't Quite Go the Distance

In an era of oversaturation at the cineplex, with countless retreads and follow-ups dominating the marquees, sometimes a gimmick is just the trick to freshen things up. A clever and well-executed hook can seem fresh and original, but if poorly done, it can easily torpedo a film. In the case of new Korean action-thriller The Terror Live, a chamber piece that takes place entirely in a radio recording studio, the gimmick in the premise is both its saving grave and its downfall.

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Revenge Week: Dirty Blood's Dangerous Payback

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

As a society Korea has been slow to change despite its economic growth. At times it can seem like a gigantic, perpetually simmering pot of discontent that seems dangerously close to boiling over. One aspect of Korean society that is often brushed under the carpet is repressed sexuality and while it isn’t something you will encounter much in TV dramas, music and the news, the Korean film industry, of late, has been vocal in its depiction of the widespread abuse that rages through the country. Truth be told, it is often used opportunistically and many of the works in question tread a very fine line.

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Dirty Blood (나쁜 피, Nah-beun pi) 2012

As a society Korea has been slow to change despite its economic growth. At times it can seem like a gigantic, perpetually simmering pot of discontent that seems dangerously close to boiling over. One aspect of Korean society that is often brushed under the carpet is repressed sexuality and while it isn’t something you will encounter much in TV dramas, music and the news, the Korean film industry, of late, has been vocal in its depiction of the widespread abuse that rages through the country. Truth be told, it is often used opportunistically and many of the works in question tread a very fine line.

Dirty Blood is one such film that exists in dangerous territory. While other 2012 features that examined sex crimes in an aggressive fashion, such as Don’t Cry Mommy and Azooma, did so in a relatively black and white fashion. Director Kang Hyo-jin opts to operate in a grey area, much like Lee Don-ku did with his incendiary debut Fatal, also last year.

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Interview: Director Kong Quee-hyun (U.F.O.) Discusses Stress and Student Life in Korea

Kong Quee-hyun directed his debut U.F.O. last year. His film premiered at the Pucheon International Fantastic Film Festival and following a run in Korean theaters earlier this year, the young filmmaker is now getting ready for his next project.

He took the time to talk to MKC about student life in Korea and the realities of low-budget filmmaking in the local industry.

U.F.O. originally featured at last year’s PiFan (Pucheon International Fantastic Film Festival) and was eventually released in Korea this May. How did Indiestory, your distributor, come aboard?

I won the CGV movie collage award at the Cinema Digital Seoul film festival, which was the film’s second event. This is a $10,000 cash prize to support the distribution of an independent film. Indiestory saw the film and expressed their interest then which is how they became involved.

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U.F.O. (2011)

One of the recurring motifs in Korean cinema is the representation of repressed trauma. Whether as a lazy deus ex machina in a rote romcom or the underlying social agenda of an auteurist prestige pic, it never seems to be far from the surface. It’s prevalence in the country’s film industry is in itself an indication of just how important it is. Having been subjected to numerous colonizations and following decades of inequity at the hands of local autocratic governments, Korea is no stranger to psychological wounds and dark memories. However, as the country finally moved into the light, slowly but surely, following the end of Chung Doo-hwan’s administration in 1988, this trauma has been relegated to the basement. But then, why shouldn’t this be the case?

We all have memories we would rather forget but rather than a few isolated instances, Koreans have had whole generations that still haunt them. The need to forget is potent and has almost become a collective requirement of Korean society. Of course none of it can truly be forgotten and the past is constantly alluded to, if rarely overtly. Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (2003), as a heavily cited example, was a breathtakingly complex work that encompassed the collective repression of a nation’s trauma, but it did so in the guise a serial killer genre piece. The fact that five million people saw it is also a testament to the need for these subtle acts of mnemonic cleansing.

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PiFan 2012: Osaka Violence (大阪外道, Japan) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

The main prize-winner at this year’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, Takahiro Ishihara’s Osaka Violence, is a gritty film which employs both a realistic aesthetic and deadpan excessiveness to bring home its point. As its title suggests, the film concerns the prevalence of violence in Osaka, it is depicted as the most commonplace of acts, a cyclical ritual that is absorbed from a young age through the ebb and flow of everyday life.

The film begins with a group of young boys loitering on some farmland. The owner comes up to shoo away the trespassers but is subjected to a tirade of disrespect and abuse. They walk off, leaving the old man stunned. Things have changed in Japan and certain elements of society, such as respect, are evolving but not always in a good way. This demonstration of apathy is a logical starting point for the film. The boys’ trip through their Osaka neighborhood introduces us to an increasingly apathetic subset of its inhabitants. First they cross a gangster who is friendly to them and gives them money. Their new found fortune is swiftly taken away by a group of older boys who threaten them but this new gang is in turn beaten to a pulp by an older, burlier gangster who demands a toll for crossing under ‘his’ bridge. Suddenly, their lack of respect towards the old farmer from the opening scene is not so shocking.

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Interview: 'Blood Fight in Iron-Rock Valley' Director Ji Ha-jean

An in-depth interview with Ji Ha-jean, the up-and-coming director behind the award-winning low-budget western Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley (2011), last year's PiFan winner for Best Asian Genre Film.

Interpreted by Kim Nemo

Bloody Fight references many classic westerns. What drew you to this genre in the first place?

The two most important references were Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) and the second in Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy, A Few Dollars More (1965). Inside the film there are thousands of other references, such as Shane (1953), The Man From Laramie (1955) and Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954).

What were your hopes as you embarked on making a Korean western?

I produced the film as well as directing it and even by independent film standards it had an extremely low budget ($40,000). Filmmakers with that kind of budget usually try to make experimental or dramatic films but I’m a real fan of the western genre and another aim of mine is to become a commercial film director. So I was wondering how I might be able to combine these two aims.

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PiFan 2012: The Heineken Kidnapping (De Heineken ontvoering, Holland) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Rutger Hauer’s heyday may have come before my time but as a film lover it still feels as though I grew up with him. My teenage years were spent awash in the dream of cinema and amidst the blur of it all, some films stood out. Among them was Blade Runner (1982) which, I must admit, was a film that I did not immediately warm to but the villain of the piece has stayed with me for the decade since I first I saw it. Horror may not have featured prominently in my cinema diet but I’ll never forget The Hitcher (1986), a film that could easily have been unremarkable were it not for the terrifying presence of its antagonist.

With his pellucid blue eyes, wavy blond hair and harsh features, Hauer has always been a formidable presence on screen. However, more than his physiognomy, it is of course his talent and intensity as a performer that has made him so memorable. He seems to lose himself in his best roles. I hesitate to say that he was a method actor, a term that is ill-suited to genre cinema, but he throws himself so fully into his marginalized characters that he often seems to be in a trance.

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PiFan 2012: Zombie 108 (城Z-108, Taiwan) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Of the many genres out there available for our consumption, the zombie film holds a very special place in our cinematic diet. It is actually a subgenre, being an offshoot of horror but, just like the vampire film, it as been allowed to ascend to its own autonomous position, to be taken into consideration separately from its parent. Naturally, this comes with  particular set of problems.

Zombie films occupy a very narrow field within the medium. As potent as the concept can be, it only encompasses a specific set of tropes and narrative devices which have arguably survived long past their sell-by date. George A. Romero set off the genre in the late 1960s with Night of the Living Dead but 35 years later his own efforts have begun to look tired and recycled. In fact, the most popular zombie films of the last few years have arguably been comedies which poked fun at the genre, such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Zombieland (2009), as well AMC’s series The Walking Dead, which employs the novel approach of following a zombie narrative in longform.

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PiFan 2012: Young Gun in the Time (영건 탐정 사무소, Yeong-geon Tam-jeong Sa-moo-so) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Aside from technical proficiency, I’m always amazed at Korean filmmakers’ knack for thrift. Their films, compared to Hollywood's output, barely cost a dime. A $10 million dollar budget is enough to put out a film like The Host or The Thieves, whereas similar productions in the States will go for ten times more. The cost of living is cheaper and there are other mitigating factors but the level of these productions’ sophistication is nonetheless impressive.

A look down the ladder at the low-budget fare produced in the country inspires even more awe. The beautiful and languid Bedevilled cost a measly $70,000 and many other films around that budget range feature similarly accomplished production values. Oh Young-doo 2011’s feature Invasion of Alien Bikini made quite a splash on the festival circuit and part of it was because it reputedly cost only $5,000, all of it stretched to a remarkable degree. Though at the end of the day that was still identifiable as an ultra low-budget production. His new film cost $50,000 but from an aesthetic standpoint it puts many commercial features to shame.

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PiFan 2012: Interview with Young Gun in the Time's Oh Young-doo

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Oh Young-doo has been working in the Korean film industry for 15 years and for the last couple of those he has transitioned to making his own low-budget features. He and some of his friends worked together to make the zombie omnibus feature The Neighbor Zombie in 2010 and following that Oh made his feature directorial debut with the ultra low-budget Invasion of Alien Bikini (2011) which had a very successful festival run.

Now he's back with a new feature called Young Gun in the Time, which will hit Korean screens later this month. I had the chance to catch up with him following its Korean premiere at this year's Pucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.

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PiFan 2012: The Crucible (시련, Silyeon) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Among the Korean independent fare at this year’s PiFan there were some wonderful works that will likely enjoy healthy festival runs and should find wider audiences but along with the good there is inevitably going to be some bad. One film that will quickly be forgotten is a low-budget take on Arthur Miller’s famed play ‘The Crucible’. However, please don’t confuse this film with last year’s much-ballyhooed and far more worthwhile Silenced, which was originally known as The Crucible In English.

Though not particularly familiar with Miller’s play, it’s easy to see that the filmmakers behind this work got themselves a little too caught up in the mechanics of putting on a theater piece as well as their attempt at forging a meta-narrative around the staging of a play which begins to take on the story and themes of the work in question. The story is as follows: a student theater troupe preparing to perform their rendition of Miller’s play following the mysterious death of one of their cast members. One night during rehearsals things take a turn for the worse and the events that begin to unfold mirror those of the play.

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Weekly Review Round-up (08/04-08/10, 2012)

Lots of great big broadsheet writeups for a variety of films this week and still more streaming in from PiFan and other festivals around the world, not least Fantasia where Doomsday Book recently walked away with the top prize.

RECENT FILMS

A Muse

(Hangul Celluloid, August 6, 2012)

Arirang

(Global Comment, August 7, 2012)

Couples

(VCinema, August 9, 2012)

Doomsday Book

(Film Threat, July 31, 2012)

(joblo.com, August 2, 2012)

(Variety, August 5, 2012)

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Korean Cinema News (08/02-08/08, 2012)

Finally settling back into the run of things following PiFan. Korean Cinema News is now back to its weekly status.

Not an enormous amount of news this week but The Thieves is still obliterating records at the local box office and there are few festival tidbits in the news.

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

Korean American Film Festival Commemorates the L.A. Riots
The Korean American Film Festival Los Angeles launches this week, and while it imports several titles from its New York sister festival (including Magic and Loss, with indie star Kiki Sugino, and the portentous-sounding Ultimate Christian Wrestling), its centerpiece is a program of documentaries that focus on the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots. (L.A. Weekly, August 9, 2012)

Actress Ha Becomes Mentor for Future Filmmakers
Renowned actress Ha Ji-won and director Kim Ji-hoon will serve as mentors for the Korea-China youth cultural exchange program “Beijing Toto Laboratory,” scheduled to be held in Beijing’s Kwanggeomun Middle School, Aug. 13 -17. Forty teenagers from Korea and China will participate in making eight films during the five-day program jointly sponsored by CJ CGV and Boys Vanguard of the Chinese Communist Youth Association. (The Korea Herald, August 8, 2012)

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PiFan 2012: The Suicide Shop 3D (Le Magasin des Suicides, France) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Animation was featured quite prominently at this year’s PiFan, with Japanese works such as Gyo, Rainbow Fireflies, Blood C: The Last Dark, not to mention some retrospectives on the Space Battleship Yamamoto series and Czech animation. Sadly, by the end of the festival the only one I was able to see was The Suicide Shop 3D, a French offering from live-action filmmaker Patrice Leconte.

It looked to be a cross between the stylings of Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, 2003; The Illusionist, 2008) and the playfully macabre storytelling of Tim Burton. In many ways the film was a combination of those aesthetics but what it lacked was what makes those filmmakers so successful in their craft: originality and heart. Burton may have lost his edge in recent years but his style, which itself was a combination of horror, vaudevillian and campy influences was fresh and invigorating when he burst onto the scenes 30 years ago.

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Weekly Review Round-up (07/28-08/03, 2012)

It's been a few weeks since the Weekly Review Roundups have been up but I've gone back and added them all now. Lots of PiFan reviews of course and plenty more!

I also wanted to take a moment to say that I will be a little more selective about what appears on WRR from now on. Up until now I've been happy to feature anything on Korean film as long as it was legible but over time I've come across some major outlets that don't always present honest opinions. I'm not here to name and shame but I have removed a few sources from my list that I believe do not respect their audience by giving false opinions for ulterior purposes. Anyway, shouldn't change much going forward!

Thanks for reading and WRR should be back to its weekly status for the foreseeable future.

CURRENT FILMS

Deranged

(allkpop, July 31, 2012)

(The Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2012)

The Thieves

(Seongyong's Private Place, July 28, 2012)

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PiFan 2012: Super Virgin (숫호구, Suthogoo) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

What is it that draws us time and again to narratives following socially-awkward men who are trying to lose their virginity? My first thought was that these provide a vicarious thrill for male cinema-goers but actually, these films tend to draw crowds across the gender divide. Judd Apatow recognized this and harnessed the phenomenon into global hits with The 40 Year-Old Virgin (surely one of the most self-explanatory film titles of all time) and Superbad, which were equally successful with men and women when they were released.

Super Virgin, which had it’s world premiere at this year’s PiFan, is a Korean ultra low-budget film about the 30-year-old Won Jun, who is idling away his life in Incheon with his equally directionless friends.  He’s portly, awkward and sports some unbecoming spectacles, in short he’s a virgin and there doesn’t seem to be much hope for him. A cute girl moves to town and he falls for her but what can he do? By chance, he is abducted by a scientist who wants him to test ride his new invention. This scientist has created a sex avatar that he claims has been tweaked to instantly attract every woman who will cross his path. Following a long night of drinking and a bout of despondency, Won Jun agrees to the experiment and it works like a charm. But when he uses his new avatar to woo the girl he likes things become complicated, as ironically he can no longer be a match for himself.

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PiFan 2012: Over My Dead Body (시체가 돌아왔다, Sichega Dolawassda) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Comedy is a curious beast even at the best of times. Across the world’s national film industries, thrillers, horrors, romances and action films share many common elements, while comedy tends to be fall in line with indigenously codes. I’ve said it before but it bears mentioning again: for foreign viewers, Korean comedies are a tricky proposition. Dialogue-based humor is often lost in translation and societal quirks, idiomatic expressions, customs and cultural references further complicate our relationship with these works.

My knowledge of Korean is steadily rising (and had a big bump during PiFan) so I’m starting to see things that I may have missed out on before and Over My Dead Body, which was presented in the World Fantastic Cinema section is proof of this but still doesn’t convince me that comedy is a forte of Korean cinema. It’s another of the many high-concept, mid-budget and low-brow comedy-thrillers that the industry has been churning out for some time. Having exploited certain generic combos, like the gangster-romance comedies (Marrying the Mafia and My Wife Is a Gangster), to the point of depletion, comedy writers have gotten into a habit of concocting increasingly outrageous premises in the hopes of eliciting laughs through the sheer absurdity of their narratives.

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