Han Gong-ju.

Lee Su-jen directorial debut feature film Han Gong-Ju (2013), which he also wrote and produced, was inspired by a real life incident that provoked controversy and shocked Korea in 2004, not just due the horrific nature of the crime but also due to the mistreatment of the victim’s and the lenient handling of the accused.   

 

Alone in a crowd.  

The film follows Han Gong-ju (Chun Woo-hee) a traumatized withdrawn teenage schoolgirl who at the beginning of the movie is forced to change schools, move to a remote town and live with strangers. This follows a horrific incident that is gradually explained in flashbacks as the film unfolds. Although it’s certainly not Gong-ju’s fault it’s her life that is affected. Frightened to make friends at her new school the only things that seem to keep her sane is her swimming lessons and her music. But it’s the music that leads to her exposure.

 

Music is her only solace, but also her downfall. 

When it was released in Korea in 2014 it broke the country’s opening day box office records for an independent film and it became one of the most talked about films of that year. To the directors credit the movie concentrates on the victim of a crime and not the crime it self. Chun Woo-hee won a best actress award for her role and you can see why.  An exceptional film - but probable not one you will enjoy.

Möbius.

Can a man have an orgasm without a penis? Probable something most families will be discussing over the dinner table tonight, far-fetched, not if they have recently seen Kim Ki-duk latest movie. An exceptional piece of work with a narrative that navigates a path which most other filmmakers would fear to tread.  

 

Mother.

Almost 55 years old the South Korean director/writer shows no sign of mellowing his film making skills. Following the brilliant Pieta (2012) - a film which mixed Christian symbolism and highly sexual content, which depicts the mysterious relationship between a brutal man who works for loan sharks and a middle-aged woman who claims that she is his mother - with a movie that’s equally as intense, bloodthirsty and sexy.  Mobius (2013), which was initially banned in South Korea, before the Korea Media Rating Board reviewed the film and changed the rating, starts with a row between mother and father about who should answer a ringing mobile phone, mother is aware that its fathers mistress calling him!  Following the embittered dispute that follows mother retrieves a knife kept under the Buddha statue in the family’s front room and attacks her husband attempting to part him from his penis, when this fails she turns on her teenage son who she has just caught masturbating and manages to part the lad from his manhood, eating the severed genital in front of both her husband and son. Obviously the father feels guilty and dumps his mistress who then takes pity on the son and gets raped for her trouble. Meanwhile the father spends his time searching the Internet to see if it’s possible for his son to have a transplant but of course he will need a donor!

 

Father.

In an introduction made for the Terracotta Film Festival Kim Ki-duk assures us that “there is a

message behind this intense, bloodthirsty and sexy film which is meant to bring out all that is human, desire, family and sex, and to show all human existence is connected with each other and that the personal and society are also connected together by sex”. Described by the director as having quite shocking and cruel images (which I would not argue with!) that are used to deal with the essence of desire and the sort of anger that humans possess. He admits that watching the scenes in the film will be painful and hard for the viewer but insists that you should look beyond that and see the message he intended!

 

Mistress and Son.

Although the movie does have a script it is completely void of dialog, its not a silent film with its emotional grunts and groans, it’s just that no one actually speaks - some thing that you will fail to notice once the story begins to unfold! It stars Kim regular Jo Jae-hyeon as the father; Seo Yeong-joo-I, who at sixteen years old is to young to see the movie, plays the challenging part of the son who the director first saw in Juvenile Offender (2012), which in turn led to him being offered the role. The same actress, the wonderful Lee Eun-woo, plays both mother and mistress. All three are totally convincing as are the supporting cast.  Even though it received many distinctions in the festival circuit it shamefully did not get a full UK distribution when released on the 8^th August 2014. Described as ‘a most inventive and intriguing film’, ‘enjoyably perverse’, and ‘an Oedipal fairy tale’ - ok maybe not to every ones taste but those of you who are Kim Ki-duk devotees or perhaps just like watching something different must see this joyously amusing film now available on DVD. 

Green Fish.

Described by the NY Times as a "Critique of Korean society told through the eyes of a young man who becomes enmeshed in the criminal underworld"[1] The young man in question is Mak-dong (Han Seok-Kyu). Returning home from service in the army he rescues a beautiful young lady Mi-ae (Shum Hye-jin), who is travelling on the same train, from three thugs who are harassing and manhandling her. The girl escapes without injury but Mak-dong gets beaten for his trouble and his attackers leave the train. The brave young soldier goes after them but ends up missing his train back home, retaining only a red silk scarf that belonged to the girl. Eventually returning to his mother’s house he reacquaints himself with his three brothers and his wayward sister. Mak-dong wants to set up a family restaurant so that all of its members can work together under the same roof. Our budding entrepreneur has two priorities, to earn the money to set up the new business but more pressingly he wants to find the girl and return her scarf. Travelling to Seoul to find work he discovers that Mi-ae works as a singer in a nightclub. On approaching her he again gets into a fight, this time with the gangsters that run the club. This are led by Bae Tae-gon (Moon Seong-geun) known to his men as Big Brother and Mi-ae is his mistress. But all is not lost as Bae Tae-gon takes a liking to Mak-dong and offers him a job as a car park attendant. But things don’t stop there; other tasks are given to our naïve young ex-soldier who gradually begins to get deeper into Seoul’s crime fraternity.

 

'Big Brother' and Mi-ae.

Cleverly balanced between a family drama and gangster genre thriller that’s made all the better by the acting of Han Seok-Kyu with Lee Dong-jun’s music making it feel very European at times. Not particularly original but very well executed. A promising first feature length film from South Korean director and screenwriter Lee Chang-dong who went on to make the wonderful Poetry (2010) that won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

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[1] NY Times.

Teenage Hooker Who Died and Became A Killing Machine.

There are low budget South Korean films then there’s Teenage Hooker Killing Machine - a film whose title is possible longer than the film. Teenage Hooker Who Died and Became A Killing Machine (2000) is in fact a very appropriate description of the film!

The Teenage Hooker

A sadistic teacher discovers one of his teenage students is a prostitute and blackmails her into becoming his sex slave. When she becomes pregnant, he arranges her demise. His henchmen murder her and chop her up. At this point a mysterious, sunglasses-wearing Dr Frankenstein-like character intervenes and rebuilds the remains into a cyborg (with the aid of a sewing machine). Now robotically revived, her memory comes back during a fight, and she sets out to avenge herself, going after the teacher and the three henchmen who committed the murder[1].

 

The teacher.

Gee-woong Nam is a talented man responsible for directing, the cinematography, the writing and the editing. His impressive avant-garde camera work is very artistically done, as is his handling of the cyberpunk surrealism and the soundtrack. The beautiful schoolgirl Hooker is played by Lee So-Yun, with Dae-tong Kim as the teacher, a rather nasty villain who obviously gets just recompenses. An artsy grindhouse movie that’s certainly worth a look.

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[1] Asian Wiki plot description.

Pieta.

An ugly story and one that shows no compassion, a very difficult watch at times .... but must be seen!

Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival Pieta (2012) is South Korean director Kim Ki-duk 18^th film. Previous work includes The Isle (2000), Bad Guy (2001) Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003) and 3-Iron (2003) all are well worth a re-visit.

 

Nothing more to lose!

When the film opens we observe a young man in a wheelchair hooking a metal lifting chain around his neck, he presses a button and the chain tightens lifting him out of the chair leaving his trainers on the ground. We then move to a different part of the semi derelict industrial slums of the Cheonggyecheon district of Seoul. There we find another young man in bed having what appears to be an erotic dream, he wipes himself when his mobile phone alarm goes off, gets up and dress’s for work. Lee Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a debt collector for a loan shark working a scam that if the clients can’t pay he will permanently cripple them and forces them to pay the money from an insurance they were obliged to take out to get the loan in the first place. Kang-do is a nasty character very handy with a knife that does not flinch at permanently maiming the inhabitants that populate these small machine shops that they barely scape a living from, the deed is normally carried out in front of a wife or mother.

 

'Mother' and .......

Then one day a woman turns up and claims to have abandoned him at birth 30 years previous, but he is not convinced that this person is his mother. He sets her a series of tests that he says will prove if she is the person she claims to be. Cutting a piece of flesh from his own body he makes her to eat it. Although gagging she manages the task, still not convinced he brutally rapes her. Gradually he comes to believe the respectable looking women (Cho Min-soo) and accepts her as his mother. The relationship develops and Kang-do’s prospective on life begins to change even to the extent of allowing one of his clients to play his guitar one more time! But one afternoon she disappears and Kang-do panics.

 

.....and Son.

The strange pitiless tale only then begins to unfold and only then do we realise that this once unfeeling young man now has a weakness: his mother, which makes him for the first time in his violent life venerable. Kim Ki-duk story is not about the evils of man but the evils of money in an area of Seoul that must be demolished for developers leaving ordinary hard working people without a home and the means of earning a living. According to Roger Clarke[1] the title Pieta is a Renaissance art history term referring to images of Mary cradling the dead body of her dead son, but literally means pity. And it’s a pity that more people will not take advantage of this courageous film director work. 

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[1] Roger Clarke Sight and Sound.