Korean Cinema News (03/22-03/28, 2012)

Not a huge amount of news this week though my tie to go digging for it is also a bit limited as I'm on site covering the 26th Fribourg International Film Festival.

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

Certain Seoul Movie Theatres to Add Chinese Subtitles
After English and Japanese, Chinese subtitles will be added to Korean movies in theatres as soon as the latter half of this year.  A spokesperson from the city said that "Due to the increasing number of Chinese tourists we are going to have major theatres begin service with Chinese subtitles so that they will be able to easily watch Korean movies."  (Page F30, March 22, 2012)

Festival to Bring Films on Women’s Experiences
The Seoul-based women’s film festival is back, with its line-up ever so conscious of the world’s turbulent modern history.  From the breast cancer campaign to contemporary racism to women’s sexuality, this year’s IWFFIS (International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul) is filled with diverse themes and socially conscious issues that have been affecting the lives of women worldwide.  (The Korea Herald, March 22, 2012)

6 of the Most Distinguished and Extraordinary Movies to Be Expected in 2012
Art theater Cinecube has carefully selected movies that are to be expected this year in 2012 and is presenting fans with a mega-exhibition called "Cinecubes Choice: Movies To Be Expected In 2012". This mega-exhibition will open on the 22nd until the 29th for 8 days with 6 movies that will brightly decorate 2012 with their significant qualities and shocking topics.  (hancinema.net, March 22, 2012)

What's South Korean Cinema Got?

Korea's presence on the world's silver screen has boomed in the last decade, forming the cinematic crest to the cultural phenomena know as the 'Korean Wave'.  Along with Korean cuisine and the increasingly popular world of K-pop, Korean cinema and local dramas have managed to capture the international community's interest and imagination.  The mysterious force behind this drive is riddled in Korea's unique ability to dramatize conflict in a manner that, not only surprises and delights, but directly challenges, or presentsalternatives to, the audiences' expectations and sensibilities.  (hancinema.net, March 24, 2012)

Planet of Snail Invited to Canadian Film Fest
Director Yi Seung-jun’s award-winning documentary Planet of Snail has been invited to yet another major documentary festival overseas, following its invitation to the 11th Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month, according to the movie’s production house.  An everyday portrayal of a hearing and visually impaired man and his wife, the film will be featured in the competition section of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival held annually in Toronto, Canada.  (The Korea Herald, March 25, 2012)

Song Kang-ho's First Historical Fortune
Song Kang-ho is attempting at his first historical movie.  According to an official, Song Kang-ho will start making the movie Fortune in July or August after the movie Snow Piercer.  Director Han Jae-rim is in charge of this movie and he worked with Song Kang-ho in the 2007 movie The Show Must Go On. To be released in 2013.  (hancinema.net, March 26, 2012)

Late Autumn Has Indian Summer
Kim Tae-yong's Late Autumn (2010) was second-placed at the China box office at the weekend, securing bigger numbers for the cross-national romance than on its original South Korean release in Feb 2011.  Set in the US, the film stars Tang Wei as a female prisoner, originally from China, who is given 72 hours parole to visit her family in Seattle.  On the train, she befriends a man on-the-run, played by South Korea's Hyun Bin.  (Film Business Asia, March 27, 2012)

INTERVIEW

With Wit and Wisdom, Rebel Architect Lends His Shine to the Cinema
Director Jeong Jae-eun, who made a grand debut in the local movie scene more than a decade ago with the feature film Take Care of My Cat (2001), comes back with her first documentary, Talking Architect.  The 95-minute film follows maverick Korean architect Chung Guyon (1943-2011) during the last year of his life, while he was suffering from colorectal cancer.  As with any kind of change, the director admitted the transition from features to documentaries was awkward and nerve-wracking at first.  (Joong Ang Daily, March 23, 2012)

TRAILER

All About My Wife

POSTER

All About My Wife

As One

BOX OFFICE

Architecture 101 Finds Its Way to Number 1

(Modern Korean Cinema, March 25, 2012)

Korean Cinema News is a weekly feature which provides wide-ranging news coverage on Korean cinema, including but not limited to: features; festival news; interviews; industry news; trailers; posters; and box office. It appears every Wednesday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

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.

Fribourg International Film Festival - Day III Report

Ongoing reports on the 26th Fribourg International Film Festival which Modern Korean Cinema will be covering all week.

Cuchera

(Philippines, 2011)

Dir:  Joseph Israel Laban

This was the midnight screening during the opening day but I opted to miss it in favour of attending the opening party, a decision that led to my missing the first film of the next day but I’m all caught up now!  Cuchera is only the second Filipino film I’ve seen, after the impressive The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveiros (2005) which I caught some years ago at the Dublin International Film Festival.

There’s no doubting why this was part of the midnight film section:  Laban’s depiction of drug muling in the Philippines is gruesome, all the more so considering its intimate focus.  The film’s protagonist is a middle-aged woman who is making a transition from being a prostitute and drug mule to setting up her own drug muling enterprise.

Laban’s film casts a cold and disquieting eye over the secret world of vice of the daily struggle of those engaged in its operation, often against their will or at least forced by circumstance.  The film takes a interesting look at a character who was no doubt part of the oppressed but after years of being a victim and a certain hardening in her character is now quite ready to make the leap to being the oppressor.  Her scruples are still visible, if only slightly, but it is clear that they are a nuisance that are easily cast aside as she is trying to become an underworld businesswoman.

Cuchera will likely put any viewer in a state of extreme discomfort and while its attempt to be a scorching commentary on the world it depicts is admirable it also comes off as exploitative.  I believe that the events as they happen on screen have some basis in reality but Laban tends to opt for the worst case scenario at every turn.  Subtlety certainly has no place in such a work but in order to have been properly elucidated, the themes might have played better in the hands of a more accomplished director.

The film is a debut effort but it has to be said that it is an ugly film.  This could be excusable, given the morbid and gritty subject matter, but the poor film technique is off-putting because of its quality, not just its content, and this becomes the undoing of the film.

The Last Christeros

(Mexico, 2011)

Dir:  Matias Meier

Another entry in the international competition, The Last Christeros is a languid look at a small group of Christian rebels in the mid-1930s.  Rather than focus on battles and the action of the confrontations that surround them, Meier chooses instead to delve into the small and quiet moments of introspection that exists between them.  While in theory an interesting idea for me this was a missed opportunity and its philosophical temperament resulted in a drab film that did not present enough interesting ideas to keep me interested.

There were a handful of wonderful scenes, including a great sing-a-long near the end but the long takes were borderline excruciating and went well past any acceptable boundary of artistic expression or some cinematic form of philosophical rumination.  I also quickly grew bored of the Christ imagery, which of course fit the proceedings but were somewhat akin to flogging a dead fish.

In some ways the imagery turned this into a dull counterpart to another film playing at the festival, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s seminal and surrealist midnight pic El Topo (1970).  Though whenever I was reminded of that film I grew frustrated as I wished I could have been watching it instead!

However the film certainly wasn’t awful and though I wasn’t on board with some its major artistic choices, it did demonstrate a commanding and poetic style that made it cohesive, at least from an aesthetic standpoint.  But at the end of the day I felt I wasn’t rewarded for my patience, perhaps I missed something.

Late Autumn

(South Korea, USA; 2010)

Dir:  Kim Tae-yong

Now here’s a film I’ve been dying to see for a while.  It won the public prize at last year’s FIFF edition and so wasn’t a part of this year’s but as I noticed it in the press video library, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see a film from one of South Korea’s best directors that still isn’t available even though it was released two years ago.

Kim Tae-yong’s first film was Memento Mori which he co-directed in 1999 and it is still one of my favorite K-horrors.  Seven years later he came back with Family Ties, easily one of the best Korean films of 2006 and one that deserve wider recognition.  Late Autumn is a co-production with the United States and stars Tang Wei, a big Chinese star.  She shares the screen with Hyun Bin, one of the poster boys of contemporary Korean entertainment who stole a lot of hearts alongside Ha Ji-won in the phenomenally successful K-drama Secret Garden (2010).

Tang plays a woman who murdered her husband and currently resides in jail but she is given a 72 hours furlough when her mother dies in order to attend her funeral.  On her way to Seattle she meets a suave Korean man, a gigolo who is on the run from the husband of one of his clients.

Kim's film explores people who are caught in situations that they do not have the power to control and our two immigrant protagonists kill time by sharing the road together on the classic American vehicle of escape, the Greyhound bus.  There is an element of fantasy in how they conduct themselves as they lie about their current situations to other people and play out the imaginary conversation of a man and woman who are talking in the distance.  This reluctance to be truthful could be a coping mechanism for two individuals who are not only immigrants but live on the fringe of their own minority communities.  Tang's character confesses her story and crime to her temporary road partner but does so in Mandarin while Hyun answers after each sentence with the only two words he knows; good and bad.

Late Autumn, originally a Korean film from 1966 has been remade many times and I am not familiar with its previous renditions but Kim's version transfixed me.  It was lyrical and full longing while at the same time filled with an easy going charm.  I really hope that Kim gets to make another film soon, all his works up until this point have been exceptional.

Lucky

(South Africa, 2011)

Dir:  Avie Luthra

My fourth international competition film was a full-length version of a short that was previously made by the same director in 2005.  It is a coming of age story about a young boy in a village whose mother dies.  He makes his way to the city to stay with his uncle but this does not work out as planned and soon he comes to befriend an elderly Indian woman who lives across the atrium of the apartment complex.

Luthra's film deals with quite a lot of themes but they are nestled together well within a tale that is often heart-warming.  Never have I seen a boy so hellbent on going to school and it is devastating to see him turned away or learning that his uncle has swilled away all the money left by his mother for that purpose.  The boy, Lucky, has no obvious place in society, he is an orphan with no trustworthy family to rely on and the state offers him no safety net.

Racism is also keenly dealt with as at first the Indian woman is mistrustful of Lucky and she soon makes it clear that she does not trust blacks full stop.  The boy only speaks Zulu while the senior knows Hindi and English, this further complicates their relationship but also gives them an opportunity to build a bond on the strength of their actions rather words and perception.

I really enjoyed Lucky but I felt at times that it was a little too self-assured.  It's a real crowd-pleaser though and may well walk away with the top prize.

Monpura

(Bangladesh, 2009)

Dir:  Selim Gias Uddin

My second Bangladeshi film after the previous night's Runway has the distinction of being the most popular indigenous film in decades.  However, this also means that it is a very different kind of film.  Monpura is populist fluff and yet it very good populist fluff that nonetheless engages with some interesting questions as characters are placed in tricky liminal environments.

The film announces itself very quickly as a genre film.  An opulent home at night is the scene of a murder, a servant informs the master.  It is his mentally handicapped son who has committed the deed as he was released from his shackles.  Now the servant, Shonai, is to take the blame for the murder and is sent off to Monpura, a remote island on the Ganges, to hide away from the authorities.  It is here that he meets Pori, the beautiful daughter of a nearby fisherman.  They fall in love but fate has other plans for them.

Monpura was quite well made and though it was 140 minutes long I was engaged throughout.  I'm a sucker for a good genre film and as Hollywood has consistently disappointed me with its romance films I seek them out elsewhere, notable South Korea.  Uddin's film is an epic tale of love that takes a relatively simple story and imbues it with notions of duty, social class, sacrifice, family and love.

It is not an extraordinary film and certainly lacks some substance though I shouldn't think it matters too much as its charming elements add up to a very pleasant viewing experience.  It is easy to see why this became such a hit in its native Bangladesh.

FIFF Preview

Day I Report

Day II Report
Day IV Report
Day V Report
Day VI Report
Day VII Report
Day VIII Report
Final Thoughts, Top 10 and Awards
Huh Jong-ho Interview

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.

Fribourg International Film Festival - Day II Report

Ongoing reports on the 26th Fribourg International Film Festival which Modern Korean Cinema will be covering all week.

Sita Sings the Blues

(USA, 2008)

Dir:  Nina Paley

My first film of the day after a late start was this delightful and frenetic animated retelling of the famous Indian tale of Ramayana.  Sita Sings the Blues throws itself at you from the beginning and it takes a little while to untangle the seemingly random mix of tricks, styles and storylines.  Sita is the long-suffering and loving wife of Rama and her as well as the other characters in the myth appear as different animated versions of themselves depending on the style and purpose of the scene.  For instance much of the story is played out as a musical as Sita literally sings the blues as she takes on the voice of Annette Hanshaw, a jazz vocalist from the 1920s.

The main narrative thrust of the legend is aided by a trio of unidentified Indians who trample over each other's words as they try to remember the details of the famous story, at the same time pointing out its holes and their misgivings with some of the protagonist's motivations.  The three erstwhile storytellers are hilarious and their comical banter is often aided by clever visual cues.  Complementing the various parts of the Ramayana tale are various interstices which range from almost psychedelic music videos set to modern Indian dance music and crudely but warmly drawn sequences of the filmmaker's parallel life which led her to make the film.

Nina Paley is an American animator who vividly brings to life her own interpretation of the classic tale which mingles together numerous Indian influences as well as her own personal touch, notably the classic Jazz tracks that form the heart of the film.  Sita Sings the Blues is a unique and immensely enjoyable experience.  A great synthesis of cultures and an infectious paean to the joy of discovery and the cleansing power of artistic expression.

Runway

(Bangladesh, 2010)

Dir:  Tareque Masud

The Fribourg International Film Festival is presenting the largest dedicated section to Bangladesh's cinema that has ever occurred in the west and Runway was my first of the section and also my first foray into Bangladeshi cinema.

A poor family lives right beside a runway of the Dhaka airport.  The father is away in Kuwait to earn money to send home but has not been heard from in some time.  The matriarch has bought a cow on microcredit in an effort to help support her family but it is not producing much milk.  The daughter works at a textile factory and is providing the majority of the household's income.  Ruhul is the aimless son whose has not been able to find work.  He trains about his uncle's cybercafe during the day and meets Arif who quickly befriends him and affords him a path to a new life through fundamental islam.

Runway is a film that takes place in the modern world and engages with ideas of Islam and how they fit into it.  Ruhul exists in a liminal environment, he lives in a hut with his poor family yet they are beside an international airport.  They are both connected to the whole world and entirely cut off from it.  The late Masud's film (he died shortly before completing the film in a car crash) traces Ruhul's engagement with fundamentalism, as it provides an escape to his cloitered existence.  As viewers we understand his search for some form of identity and purpose but we can not condone his brush with terrorism.  However he is never demonized and as such his representation is a successful one as we come to understand how easily such a lost youth could be brought into the fold by friendly religious fanatics.

Technically speaking the film is competently made but missing some finer touches.  Many of the scenes occur at dawn or dusk but these are murky and a little hard to make out because of the techniques and equipment used during the production.  The ending of the film had a relatively neat resolution and yet I felt that it was largely inconclusive and this very well may have been the point but it still left me unsatisfied.

Runway is a worthwhile effort from a little seen national industry.  It cleverly meshes motifs that incorporate new and old world ideas and technologies.  With Ruhul we live in this same liminal space and we are afforded a vantage point on some of the paradoxes of our modern society.

At Home Among Strangers, Strangers at Home

(USSR, 1974)

Dir:  Nikita Mikhalkov

Another film from the 'Once Upon a Time in the South' section, At Home Among Strangers is a fascinating work that combines Western tropes with Soviet images of masculinity and employs an altogether loud style that you will either love or not know what to make of.

I for one loved the style, from its opening montage that showcases the unbridled joy of the happiest Russian men I've ever seen on screen, to its robustly elegiac denouement.  There was one glaring problem though,  I had a very hard time following the story.  Everything hurtles along at a magnificent pace but the elements of the film are often extremely disparate and story elements are not well linked together.  This may have been a product of the nature of the film's production, which had a very restrictive budget.  The filmmakers were only given a certain amount of colour stock and thus many scenes are in a cheaper and grainier black and white, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

Despite this setback, I still had a great time with this picture.  It was frustrating to have to try and follow along but mainly I enjoyed spending time with these Russian characters, each with expressive faces and providing unique takes on masculinity so common to the western genre.  Like the previous night's Salt, the filmmakers tackled the project with considerable enthusiasm but whereas that was too straight a picture to really succeed, here the problem is the lack of focus.

At the end of the screening there were some vocal detractors in the audience but I was very glad to have made the time for this distinctive feature and I think I will seek out some of director Mikhalkov's other works, which I hope he hope he was able to film the way he wanted!

FIFF Preview

Day I Report

Day III Report
Day IV Report
Day V Report
Day VI Report
Day VII Report
Day VIII Report
Final Thoughts, Top 10 and Awards
Huh Jong-ho Interview

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.

Korean Box Office Update (03/23-03/25, 2012)

Architecture 101 Finds Its Way to Number 1

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Architecture 101	3/22/12	34.20%	565,020	716,681	592
2	Untouchable (fr)	3/22/12	23.90%	393,639	443,249	454
3	Helpless	3/8/12	20.00%	324,520	2,123,853	473
4	John Carter (us)	3/8/12	5.00%	82,464	803,745	258
5	Chronicle (us)	3/15/12	3.80%	63,475	359,360	288
6	This Means War (us)	2/29/12	3.10%	49,381	824,206	173
7	Russian Coffee	3/15/12	1.90%	32,084	253,711	256
8	Contraband (us)	3/22/12	1.90%	30,446	37,360	179
9	Space Dogs 3D (ru)	3/22/12	1.20%	22,781	23,323	148
10	The Vow (us)	3/14/12	1.40%	21,712	227,764	210

The dominance of local product at the Korean box office shows no signs of abating as yet another Korean film has topped the chart for the tenth week in a row.  It was once again a healthy weekend for this time of year with 1.65 million tickets sold and a 56% indigenous market share, well ahead of last year's 1.1 million and 37%.  Local films managed this feat with only three entries in the top ten, in fact, despite holding five of the spots, Hollywood films accounted for a meager 16%.

The new number one this week was the cross-generational romance film Architecture 101, from Lee Yong-ju, the director of the excellent K-horror Possessed (2009).  The film took in 565,020 admissions this past weekend and a commanding one third of the total marketplace.  Reviews are good so it may stick around but then again that's been the case for most of the recent spat of Korean films so it's hard to predict how this will continue down the line.  It will also have a fresh local release to contend with in a few days time.

The surprise opener at number two was the French movie Untouchable, a remarkable little film that has become the most successful in that territory of the past few years.  It's 393,639 haul is enormous for a non-US/Korean release although I was told that the marketing push for it was significant.  This film has quickly been winning over audiences all around the world so it may catch on here and a week-on-week increase is not out of the question.

Dropping two spots was Helpless as it took a further 324,520 tickets in its third week.  It has cleared the two million mark and will now be hoping to take down three before long.  I imagine it has a good chance at this but given the last few months, where a number of successful films have suddenly faded away quickly, it will have to remain stable for a few more weeks to secure the milestone.

John Carter dropped one spot but nearly 60% for a 82,464 weekend.  Disney has already accepted defeat on this picture as it was announced that they were writing it down to the tune of $200 million earlier this week.

In its sophomore week, Chronicle receded a hefty 70% for a poor 63,475.  The high concept picture could still land just north of the half million mark but that's not much to write home about.

This Means War, now in its fourth week, actually went up one spot event though it lost 40% of its business.  Its 49,381 weekend brings its total to a respectable 824,206.

After a dismal opening Russian Coffee has crumbled.  It was off nearly 80% for a 32,084 take and now the $5 million picture will likely end up with less than 350,000 admissions.

Mark Whalberg's new action/thriller Contraband was a no-show as it debuted at number eight with a puny 30,446 tickets.  Meanwhile Russian animation Space Dogs 3D made little impact at number nine with its 22,781 start.  Rounding out the top 10 was the second week of The Vow which tumbled 80% after an already poor opening for a 21,712 frame.

The Ryoo Seung-beom and Lee Beom-su black comedy Over My Dead Body opens next week and stands a good chance of taking over the top spot, though Architecture 101 could hold it or Untouchable might sneak in and grab it.  Another contender is Wrath of the Titans which follows Clash of the Titans, a sizable hit in Korea during 2010.  I don't think that this one will go over as well but it may still be enough.  Should be interesting to see which of these four take next week's crown!

Source: kobis.or.kr


The Korean Box Office Update is a weekly feature which provides detailed analysis of film box office sales over the Friday to Sunday period in Korea. It appears every Sunday evening or Monday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

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.

Fribourg International Film Festival - Day I Report

Ongoing reports on the 26th Fribourg International Film Festival which Modern Korean Cinema will be covering all week.

11 Flowers
(China; 2011)

Dir:  Wang Xiaoshuai

My first film of the festival was one of the twelve contenders for the main prize, known as 'Le Regard d’Or', which has previously been awarded to films like Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000), Eric Khoo’s My Magic (2008) and most recently Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry (2010).  11 Flowers is the latest film from Wang Xiaoshuai, a successful Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker who is well know for Beijing Bicycle (2001).

A coming of age tale set at the end of the cultural revolution, Xiaoshuai’s latest work is the product of a fertile mind and an experienced director’s touch.  The film follows the 11-year-old Wang Han who is asked to lead his school in the morning gymnastics' class.  He needs a new shirt for the position and his mother, who works at the local factory eventually capitulates to his sulking, using a year’s worth of fabric rations in the process.  He eventually loses the prized shirt when a killer swipes it from him as he tries to evade the police.

The film is exquisite in its design and though the premise starts off slight, the local society is soon vividly brought to life.  Wang Han’s shirt and the despair of a neighbouring family are set against the backdrop of the impending revolts in contemporaneous China.  Wang Han is forced to grow up very quickly in the climate of tumult and change and the driving force of his loss of innocence is his gaze, steadily corrupted by each new event he witnesses.

The stunning and evocative cinematography is all the more potent as it succeeds in drawing attention away from itself.  At times I was reminded of Emmanuelle Lubezki’s work on recent Terence Malick films, though the lensing here is nowhere near as ostentatious.  A great start to the festival and already a strong contender for the FIFF’s top prize.

Histórias Que Só Existem Quando Lembradas

(France, Brazil, Argentina; 2011)

Dir:  Júlia Murat

I had heard great things about Historias prior to this screening and I was excited as I sat down.  It must be said however, that at first it was a frustrating experience.  The quality of the print might have been to blame as the picture quality was often blurry and jarring, especially during long shots and my eyes had trouble focussing. 

The film follows an elderly woman as she goes about her daily routine in an extremely remote part of Argentina.  She is part of a minuscule community, similarly composed of seniors.  The early stages of the film are built around very long takes and languid repetition as we are introduced to the invariance of her daily life.  There was a slight vein of droll humour but I was having trouble settling into the experience.

A young female backpacker and amateur photographer arrives and asks for a place to stay for a few days.  The woman gives her a room but she and the rest of the insular community treat her with mistrust.  At this stage this is how I felt as I viewer, as though the filmmaker wasn’t letting me into his quaint and carefully structured world.

When the inhabitants of the village finally warm to the girl the film magnificently opened itself up to me.   Actions that had been repeated throughout the film became intimate as the camera gradually came closer to its subjects.  What at first were formal tableaus seen from a distance became warm pictures of humanity.  The camera beckoned us to breathe in this community that time had forgotten.

The young girl acts as a surrogate for the viewer but is also a fascinating character in her own right.  She revels in old techniques of photography, listens to music from a bygone era and professes that she was born at the wrong time.  But it is also clear that this statement is a little naïve as she is the image of a contemporary cosmopolitan girl, complete with the trappings of modern day such as her iPod.  While she quickly feels at home in the village when its residents accept her she is also a strong female character with a progressive view on gender roles, which puts her at odds with the close-knit patriarchal society.

Her voyage of self-discovery becomes our own as the filmmaker dares us to question our role in today’s world and how we relate to it.  Historias is not a film that will get wide exposure but if you do happen across it, it is not to be missed!

Tilai
(Switzerland, France, Germany, Burkina Faso, United Kingdom; 1990)

Dir:  Idrissa Ouedraogo

A film made in Burkina Faso and funded by a cotery of European cultural institutions, Tilai is an odd beast.  It is set in tribal communities and stars actors who seem to have been pulled straight out of that world.  While the production values are not very high there is a surprising amount of craft invested in the effort and everything flows along remarkably well.  The strange thing is just how focussed and straight-forward it is.  I don’t known if I’ve ever come across a film that was so matter-of-fact in relation to its plot, characters and dialogue, which is so blunt that it is often quite comical.  My question is whether the deliberate style and brevity of the production was meant to be ironic or if it was an attempt to incorporate very clear storytelling.

The virile protagonist has just returned to his tribe after a two-year absence, announcing his arrival with a horn on top of a hill.  He expects his woman to be waiting for him and for them to get married.  She had been promised to him and as luck would have they are in love.  But his brother, upon greeting him, informs him that she is now wed to their father, making her their mother.  He is furious and immediately chooses exile over confronting his father.  The lovers story doesn’t end here as they henceforth employ subterfuge to steal precious moments together but it is not long before they are found out.

The story bristles along at a steady clip and the benefit of the film’s clarity is just how easy it is to follow along but the downside is that beyond the simple narrative and the obvious reference to some ridiculously outdated patriarchal tribal codes, the film has little else to offer.  At 84 minutes, Tilai does go by in a flash and though the story is familiar (almost streamlined Shakespearean) and not particularly original, the unfamiliar setting that is richly brought to life make this a worthwhile venture.  However, as it is a Central African film from 22 years ago, I daresay it may be hard to get you hands on it.

Salt
(Argentina, Chile; 2011)

Dir:  Diego Rougier

The official opening film of the festival, Salt was preceded by an almost interminable series of windy speeches from local politicians praising the festival’s focus on diversity and its continued success in the region.  It must be said that is wasn’t all bad but since most of it had to be translated into two (French, German) and sometimes three languages (with English thrown into the mix), it did drag on a bit.  This says nothing of the frankly bizarre musical act that linked each podium grandstand.

The programmer of the festival, Thierry Jobin, an affable and enthusiastic cinephile explained how Salt came to the festival’s office in a DVD slipcase which references Sergio Leone’s seminal western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).  There is a whole section at the festival titled 'Once Upon a Time In the South' that will present how the genre has stretched far beyond its habitual North American stomping ground.  Salt, set in the deserts of Northern Chile, is the progeny of a self-ascribed obsessive of westerns and it shows.

A Spanish filmmaker named Sergio is trying to get his western made but everyone is turning him down, pointing out that he hasn’t had the experience to write such a project and that he clearly doesn’t know the area where he wants to film it, the North Chilean desert, said to be the driest in the world.  He then goes on location to acquire inspiration and said experience.  He is immediately mistaken for a man called Diego and he finds himself sucked into a narrative that provides him with much more experience than he bargained for.

Homage is key to the film and the names of characters and many of the actions and scenes are borrowed from famed western works and filmmakers.  It is all very enjoyable and it builds to a crescendo as our central protagonist gets sucked into this world but it’s also a little thin as it can come off as pastiche rather than successfully integrated elements that add to an original work.  At the end of the day, despite its ingenious appropriation of genre tropes and blistering enthusiasm, Salt is still an homage from a filmlover to his favorite genre rather than an addition to it that stands on its own.  Worth a watch but there isn’t much to walk away with.

FIFF Preview

Day II Report

Day III Report
Day IV Report
Day V Report
Day VI Report
Day VII Report
Day VIII Report
Final Thoughts, Top 10 and Awards
Huh Jong-ho Interview

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).

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The Yellow Sea (황해, Hwang-hae) 2010

Since the days of the New Korean Wave of the late 80s and early 90s men in Korean cinema have frequently found themselves on the road in search of answers, a home and their identity.  In contemporary Korean cinema male characters are for the most part much more comfortably settled within the progressive society of modern Korea and yet their philosophical dilemmas still simmer under the surface, refusing to go away.

Four years ago, Na Hong-jin burst onto the scene with one of the most remarkable debuts in modern times.  The Chaser was an under-the-radar genre effort from a rookie director with two mid-level stars, and yet it became one of the highest grossing films of the year and along with The Good, the Bad and the Weird was also one of Korea’s most popular exports.  Today, in the spring of 2012, Na and his two stars Kim Yun-seok and Ha Jung-woo are among the heavyweights of the Korean film industry.  Kim’s last five films have all attracted well over 2 million admissions; in fact most of them have soared over the 5 million mark (The Chaser; Woochi, 2009; Punch, 2011), a enormous benchmark in the Korean industry that few films have reached.  The charismatic Ha is now one of the country’s top leading men, indeed two of his films topped the box office last month alone (Nameless Gangster, Love Fiction).

For Na’s sophomore feature, the gang got back together again and delivered another worldwide hit in The Yellow Sea, originally released in Korea in December 2010 and presented internationally at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011.  Just like his first film, Na’s follow up is firmly rooted in genre but disassembles and reconstructs it to further his own ends.  Beginning as an ominous rumble in the distance, the film accelerates to the point that it becomes a heart-pumping descent into despair. 

Ha Jung-woo plays Goo-nam, a down on his luck cab driver in the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture of Northeast China who loses at mahjong every night as he hopelessly tries to earn enough money to pay off the loan sharks who funded his wife’s passage to Korea.  He’s offered a job to clear his debt by Jeong-hak (Kim Yun-seok), which sees him smuggled into Seoul in order to kill a man.  He has a week to carry out the contract and while on the peninsula will try to track down his wife whom he hasn’t heard from since she left.

Na’s mise-en-scene is downbeat, gritty and very evocative.  We follow Goo-nam around Yanji, a dirty city full of forgotten souls.  It operates like a lawless border town, steeped in vice and hopelessness.  The film is split into a few chapters which each up the stakes over the last.  Goo-nam’s debasement is the key narrative point for much of the film and more than anything, what defines this is his fractured identity.

Throughout most of The Yellow Sea he find himself in transit or on the run.  He is preyed upon and taken advantage of from the outset; his lack of clear national identity is also the source of his lack of confidence.  There is an early scene which features stray dogs and it quickly becomes clear that this is what he is.  He only fights back through the basest instincts of survival.  Much of the action takes place in boats, buses, cars, ports and roads and Goo-nam is always in danger.  Like the emasculated males that found themselves wandering the roads of earlier Korean cinema, he seeks his identity through lines of transportation but in modern Korea, a country that often seeks to forget about its past, he is not welcome.  He is a visible and painful reminder of an oppressive and traumatic recent history.  Whether jumping off a boat, apprehended on a bus, chased on the street or crashed into while driving a car, he is forced into the wild, away from civilization.  Conversely it is only in these scenes, high up in the mountains, that the threat dissipates.  Despite the looming danger, he is safe in the untouched and austere calm of the outdoors.

The Yellow Sea begins as a gritty drama and thriller, and then turns into a suspense film for its second chapter but then becomes an unapologetic and propulsive action film for the significant remainder of the running time which, though 140 minutes long, is breathless.  It’s an exhausting and sometimes morbid experience to be sure, but the pure energy and raw vitality of the set pieces are exceptionally effective.  Much of the pulsating back half of the film had me short of breath.

Just like in The Chaser, Ha and Kim are exceptional.  Though their roles as protagonist and antagonist are reversed, they are remarkably engaging.  Ha truly embodies Goo-nam’s despair while Kim, despite his dead eyes and listless mumble is one of the most ferocious and animalistic cinema villains of recent times.

I will say that The Yellow Sea is best enjoyed as a genre effort as held under close dramatic scrutiny, it may turn up some unsatisfying conclusions.  A small price to pay in my eyes for what was one of the most invigorating cinematic experiences of the last few years.  While Korean cinema may have a lot more to offer than its thrillers, when a film like this comes along, it’s easy to see what all the fuss is about.

The Yellow Sea is out on DVD/Blu-ray in the UK on March 26th, from Eureka Entertainment.

★★★★☆

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.

Weekly Review Round-up (03/17-03/23, 2012)

Lots of great writeups in this week's review round-up including for a number of new Korean releases.

CURRENT KOREAN RELEASES

Architecture 101

(Scene in Korea, March 22, 2012)

Dancing Queen

(The Hollywood Reporter, March 20, 2012)

Gabi

(Scene in Korea, March 17, 2012)

Romance Joe

(Slant Magazine, March 17, 2012)

RECENT FILMS

Always

(Twitch, March 20, 2012)

(Xu Mobile, March 16, 2012)

Hindsight

(Twitch, March 20, 2012)

Invasion of Alien Bikini

(Hangul Celluloid, March 19, 2012)

I Saw the Devil

(Init_Scenes, March 19, 2012)

Moss

(ROK Drop, March 20, 2012)

Penny Pinchers

(Beyond Hollywood, March 21, 2012)

Quick

(Twitch, March 20, 2012)

S.I.U.

(Beyond Hollywood, March 22, 2012)

Sunny

(Drama Rants, March 22, 2012)

(While You on Earth, March 22, 2012)

The Apprehenders

(Init_Scenes, March 17, 2012)

The Beast

(Beyond Hollywood, March 20, 2012)

The Housemaid

(Movies With Butter, March 18, 2012)

The Man From Nowhere

(Korean Candy, March 19, 2012)

The Perfect Game

(Groove Korea, March 18, 2012)

PAST FILMS

Actresses, 2009

(Otherwhere, March 16, 2012)

Breathless, 2008

(Asian Movie Pulse, March 18, 2012)

Drifting Islands, 1960

(Seen in Jeonju, March 19, 2012)

Lost in the Mountains, 2009

(Rainy Day Movies, March 18, 2012)

Oasis, 2002

(Next Projection, March 19, 2012)

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well, 1996

(Korean Grindhouse, March 17, 2012)

Vengeance Trilogy, 2002-2005

(Init_Scenes, March 22, 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. 

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.

Preview: The Devotion of Suspect X

I recently finished reading Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X, a book I picked up by chance in London Luton Airport as I was trying to offload my last 10 pounds following my trip to the East Winds Festival and Symposium earlier this month.  Truth be told, I rarely read modern fiction anymore and much less do I purchase physical paperbacks.  However, as I browsed the WHS Smith, I didn’t find any classics so I resignedly drifted over to the general fiction section and after a thorough perusal of the shelves I elected to get Dance Dance Dance (1988), one of the few novels I hadn’t read from Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors, but as I made my way to the check-out a book buried deep in a display table caught my eye.  I was immediately drawn to it and quickly changed my mind about Murakami.  I didn’t know what it was but I later realized that I had come across its name in passing as it is happens to be an upcoming Korean film project, though I knew nothing beyond its title.  I certainly wasn’t aware that it was based on this popular Japanese crime thriller.

Not too long ago I read Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque and Cut back to back and was quite taken with their effortless style chronicling extraordinary and often horrific events.  From its opening pages, The Devotion of Suspect X gripped me and turned out to be the very definition of a page-turner as I devoured it in two sittings.  When I put down the book I was filled with a nervous energy and I’m sure its devastating ending will stay with me for a long time.  Suddenly I’ve become terribly excited about the forthcoming Korean version of this 2005 novel, which was already made into a cult 2008 Japanese film.  The premise, the characters, the atmosphere and the underlying themes make it a natural fit for Korean cinema and if done right it could well become one of the breakout hits of the year.

Ryoo Seung-beom

The story, taken from the backpage blurb of the English-language Abacus edition, is as follows:

“Yasuko lives a quiet life, a good mother to her only child.  But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one evening, her comfortable world is shattered.

When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that night, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated.  Nothing quite makes sense…”

Though not referred to in the above synopsis, the principal character of the novel is actually Yasuko’s next-door neighbour Ishigami, a high school math teacher who sets in motion the extraordinary story.  Before making the connection to the forthcoming Korean film, I was already picturing the burly and jovial Ko Chang-seok as this formidable and fascinating character.  When I remembered the upcoming Korean film I hoped he was playing him, though it would have been a long shot as he is not a top leading man.  Indeed that did turn out to be the case but I was no less excited by the actor selected in his place. 

Lee Yo-won

Ryoo Seung-beom played the punk kid for years in Korea cinema (often in his brother Ryoo Seung-wan’s films) until he was finally cast in meatier roles in The Servant (2010) and The Unjust (2010) among others.  Now he is one of the industry’s leading lights and at 31, he still has a lot ahead of him.  He’s about 20 years younger than the character (who has been renamed to Suk-go for the Korean film) so it remains to be seen whether the teacher’s age will be changed or if Ryoo will be subjected to hours of makeup everyday like Jeong Jae-yeong and Park Hae-il were for the recent Moss (2010) and the upcoming Eungyo (2012).  In any case I think Ryoo is a great choice and while he will certainly set himself apart from the protagonist presented in the book I think he has just the right combination of charisma, intelligence and paranoia to pull it off.

Playing the role of Yasuko (renamed Hwa-sun) will be Lee Yo-won who most recently starred in The Recipe (2010) and the K-Drama 49 Days (2011).  Her beauty and demureness should be advantageous for the role and though I am not overly familiar with her work she seems like a strong choice.

Bang Eun-jin

Leading the whole affair will be Bang Eun-jin, who was primarily known as an actress before she turned to the director’s chair with Princess Aurora, one of the best genre efforts to come out in 2005.  Her sophomore film is a much more ambitious affair but given the nature of her first outing and the way she handled herself, I am confident that she is the right person for the job.

I think it’s fair to say that The Devotion of Suspect X (I imagine this title will subsequently change) is one of my most anticipated Korean films, not too far below Bong Joon-ho’s Snow Piercer (2013), Lee Hae-joon’s My Dictator (2013), Im Sang-soo’s The Taste of Money (2012) and Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Berlin File (2013).  I hope this has whetted your appetite as well!

While no release date has been confirmed as of this writing, filming, which began in December 2011, should be completed.  I imagine the film is being prepped for an autumn or winter release.

For more information on this and other films, visit MKC's Upcoming Releases page.

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.