BiFan 2017 Review: SUDDENLY IN DARK NIGHT Goes Bump in All the Right Places

By Pierce Conran

From Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid in 1961 all the way to Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden last year, Korean cinema has delighted in torrid tales of disruptive house servants. Whether as a way to contrast social classes or explore illicit sexuality, it has remained a compelling source for bold filmmakers. Ko Young-nam’s 1981 erotic psychodrama Suddenly in Dark Night, though less complex than the aforementioned, is another fine example of the sub-genre.

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Revenge Week: Trailers of Revenge! Day 6

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). This daily series comes courtesy of Tom Giammarco, the author of the Seen in Jeonju website, surely one of the best resources for information on classic Korean cinema on the web. Enjoy!

This will be the final entry that I have for REVENGE WEEK and I wanted to save the best for last. Yesterday’s theme of having a hitherto unknown family member exacting revenge on a victim touches a little on today’s theme of a stranger in the house.

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Revenge Week: Fatal Femininity, Masochistic Masculinity - The Films of Kim Ki-young

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

“If the national cinema aesthetics of Korea are characterized by the thematic motifs of han (pent-up grief), mise-en-scenes of rural mountainous landscapes, and understated emotions that are frequently projected in the works of Shin Sang-ok and Im Kwon-Taek, Kim Ki-yong is a filmmaker who falls completely outside this framework.”

-       Kyung Hyun Kim

Words like baroque, surrealistic, erotic and horror get bandied around a lot when talking about Kim Ki-young. Though his status as an auteur and place in the Korean cinema pantheon is secure there remains a lot to be discussed about his films. Within the realm of the revenge narrative his films are unique creations tapping into our fears about family and the cultural upheavals caused by modernity. Returning to the same themes, character archetypes, storylines and images, Kim was obsessed with placing impotent men, bratty children, scorned women and matriarchs under one roof and seeing the weak and the strong clash with one another. Although not as violent as a lot of the current Korean revenge, crime and horror pictures they are nonetheless emotionally jarring and claustrophobic.

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WKR: Current Korean Hits, LKFF and Classic Film Reviews (11/10-11/16, 2012)

Lots of reviews in from the LKFF and more than classic films reviewed than usual, thanks in large part to a big new update on koreanfilm.org.

CURRENT FILMS

A Werewolf Boy

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, November 12, 2012)

Confession of Murder

(Screen Daily, November 9, 2012)

Masquerade

(oriental nightmares, November 12, 2012)

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KOFA Treasures: Kim Ki-young's Woman of Fire (화녀, Hanyeo) 1971

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

Aside from a few choice selections, remakes have become something of a bane for contemporary cinephiles.  They are borne out of commercial interests and, for the most part and almost by default, they are unoriginal.  They are also omnipresent on today’s marquees, but this wasn’t always the case.  Despite the good examples that do exist, the announcement of a remake almost never inspires much confidence, but what about when a director remakes his own work?

Surprisingly this has happened quite often, mainly when a foreign filmmaker remakes his own successful work for Hollywood.   Among the oldest examples are Hitchcock’s British and US versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956) or Yasujiro Ozu’s I Was Born But… (1932) and Good Morning (1959), both Japanese.  Among the most intriguing ones are Michael Haneke’s almost identical versions of Funny Games (Austria, 1997 and US, 2007): the US version was a fascinating meta-narrative experiment that explored our species' fascination with violence, I’m just not sure it’s what the studio had in mind, despite it being a shot-for-shot copy of the original.

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Weekly Review Round-up (02/25-03/04, 2011)

Terribly for the two-day delay for this week's update, I'm currently in Coventry attending the East Winds Symposium + Film Festival and haven't been able tear myself away!  In any case lots of great pieces this week including many for The Front Line which saw its home market release in the UK this past Monday.

Don't forget this year's Korean Blogathon starts tomorrow and will be mirrored on Modern Korean Cinema here.

CURRENT KOREAN RELEASES

Howling

(FilmBiz Asia, March 2, 2012)

RECENT RELEASES

GLove

(Flixist, February 25, 2012)

Hindsight

(hancinema.net, March 3, 2012)

Invasion of Alien Bikini

(CriterionCast, February 25, 2012)

Moss

(Flixist, February 24, 2012)

Penny Pinchers

(hancinema.net, February 25, 2012)

Poetry

(Init_Scenes, February 29, 2012)

Quick

(Korean Grindhouse, February 26, 2012)

S.I.U.

(The One One Four, February 25, 2012)

Sunny

(Flixist, February 24, 2012)

The Front Line

(Blu-Ray.com, February 29, 2012)

(Blu-Ray Definition, February 24, 2012)

(Chris and Phil Present, February 27, 2012)

(Cinema Architecture, February 27, 2012)

(Cinema Paradiso, February 25, 2012)

(Cine Vue, February 29, 2012)

(Daily Record, February 27, 2012)

(dramabeans, February 26, 2012)

(Film Ireland, February 28, 2012)

(FilmJuice, February 28, 2012)

(Modern Korean Cinema, February 25, 2012)

(myreviewer.com, February 28, 2012)

(Rainy Day Movies, February 24, 2012)

(The Film Pilgrim, February 29, 2012)

(Twisted Wing, February 27, 2012)

The Housemaid

(filmnotion.com, February 24, 2012)

The Unjust

(Init_Scenes, March 3, 2012)

The Yellow Sea

(Seongyong's Private Place, March 2, 2012)

Themselves

(Seen in Jeonju, March 2, 2012)

War of the Arrows

(Film Arcade, February 28, 2012)

(Rough Cut, February 25, 2012)

PAST FILMS

Champion, 2002

(ROK Drop, February 27, 2012)

Mist, 1967

(Seen in Jeonju, February 25, 2012)

Once Upon a Time in High School, 2004

(Korean Grindhouse, March 3, 2012)

The Actresses, 2009

(Eastern Kicks, February 27, 2012)

(Korean Class Massive, February 24, 2012)

(London Korea Links, February 27, 2012)

The Weekly Review Round-up is a weekly feature which brings together all available reviews of Korean films in the English language (and sometimes French) that have recently appeared on the internet. It is by no means a comprehensive feature and additions are welcome (email pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com). It appears every Friday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News, and the Korean Box Office Update. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

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