Snowpiercer (2013)

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-Ho, 2013)

With Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-Ho may have made that rare Hollywood-style science fiction film that does not need to take itself too seriously to provoke. As with The Host (2006), Bong acknowledges the outright ridiculousness of his film by injecting it with humor, countering the bleakness that is inherent in any post-apocalyptic tale.

Several years into the future, the earth is engulfed by ice caused by humanity attempting to reverse the effects of global warming. Except for the passengers aboard a train that perpetually chugs along a route that spans the entire world, everybody else has frozen to death. The world, as a result, has been shrunk within the confines of a luxury train.

Cinema has always maintained its love affair with trains since it utilized a steam engine rampaging towards the unsuspecting audience as the prime spectacle in The Great Train Robbery in 1903. With strangers forced to interact and socialize within limited spaces, the cramped and claustrophobic interiors of trains become apt stages for suspense and mystery, as with Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers in a Train in 1951 or the many adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Orient Express.

In 1964, John Frankenheimer, acknowledging the potential of the locomotive to evoke excitement and urgency, released The Train where Burt Lancaster attempts to save art treasures from the greedy clutches of the Nazis. Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, set on an express train from Beijing to Shanghai, envelopes its sordid tale with the exoticism of travel. In 2005, Tickets, featuring three episodes directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi, emphasized the social stratification that is part and parcel of travelling by train.

With Snowpiercer, which is based on the graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Bong exposes the same fascination with trains that has consumed the many filmmakers that preceded him. The film, which concerns itself largely with the oppressive social divide that was created supposedly for the survival of the last remaining human beings that exist inside the train, has Curtis (Chris Evans), a resident of the unfortunate tail section of the train, spearheading a revolution to reach the engine where the train’s creator, the mysterious Wilford (Ed Harris), lives.

At once, Bong capitalizes on the innate inequity of the class structure that train travel subsists on. The first class passengers will eat steak and have all the amenities their first class existence naturally provides them. The passengers in the tail end, stowaways whose lives are owed supposedly to the generosity of the first class passengers, will have to satisfy themselves with dregs.

Bong begins with the concept, before enlarging it as his characters move forward, discovering that humanity does not revolve around the injustice they personally suffer but also about structures, norms and measures that have become necessary for both survival and the containment of the evils humanity is capable of. By the end of the film, inequity becomes the least of humanity’s problems, as humanity bares its fundamental monstrosity. The stakes cascade and the lines blur as the plot thickens.

Snowpiercer however is a lot more fun than it sounds. Not only does Bong capitalize on themes that are readily available because of his use of the train as a centerpiece to his tale, he also capitalizes on the physical traits of the train to create a more visceral viewing experience. He understands the mechanics of the train’s narrow space. He himself limits his camera within the finite borders of the train, and creates action sequences that have realistic depth. The brutality that bolsters the film’s themes is therefore more palpable with bodies being hacked and abused within close distances.

The perpetual movement of the train also plays a big role in Bong’s well-orchestrated spectacle. The film follows the incessant rhythm and velocity of the vehicle as it avoids being stalled unnecessarily. Even its lengthy expositions are accompanied by wit and absurd pageantry, as exemplified by Tilda Swinton’s histrionic portrayal of a high-ranking bully. Snowpiercer is precise in its intent to primarily entertain and exhilarate despite its fluent observations on the human condition.

Snowpiercer is loud and brazen. It is consistently hilarious, yet at the same time, it also never fails to inflict fear, suspense or sentiment whenever it needs to do so. Snowpiercer is Bong’s outrageous ode to trains, to their power that have always fascinated us, and to everything else they can ever represent. This is also his tribute to cinema, which has the power to turn the lowly and hardworking train into an emblem for how humanity has remained woefully unchanged despite its years of persistent existence.

My Sassy Girl (2001)

My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001)
Korean Title: Yeopgijeogin geunyeo

Kwak Jae-young's My Sassy Girl is not a great film; quite far from it, actually. The film's humor, a delightful combination of slapstick and satire, is unsustained. When the two lovers separate for their self-imposed two-year sabbatical from each other, the film succumbs to convention, capping what feels like a tireless exercise of non-stop irreverent hilarity with what essentially is a saccharine resolution. However, My Sassy Girl's acclaim is not derived from its supposed cinematic brilliance. The film is heralded by this generation of hopeless romantics who are slowly becoming suspicious of Hollywood's mass-produced and ultimately sterile romances. The fact that the film is based from a story serialized and read by millions in the internet cannot go unnoticed. If anything, the source material is attestation of the film's inherent cool, with the film being a clear product of this age of cyber-love and free internet literature.

Gyun-woo (Cha Tae-hyun), a college student who we learn was made to wear girls' clothes when he was a young boy, rescues a drunk girl (Jun Ji-hyun) from being run over by the subway train. The girl, while inside the train, pukes on an old man. Before collapsing, she looks at Gyun-woo and calls him "honey," leading everyone to believe that the two are dating and eventually forcing Gyun-woo to carry the girl on his back and take her to the nearest motel. Thus begins their atypical relationship, with the Gyun-woo servile and obedient to the girl's whims and fantasies.

The circumstances of their relationship result to an onslaught of hilarious situations which comprise the bulk of the film's running time. There's much pleasure to be derived from the film's comedy especially since Cha and Jun play their roles with endearing conviction, satisfyingly transforming the several over-the-top scenarios into funny deviations. While the humor is absolutely lowbrow with most of it revolving around shock (the girl vomiting what looks like her dinner of rice and noodles on the poor old man's toupee), violence (Gyun-woo being beaten up with a broom by his mother), and absurd scenarios (a birthday bash in a theme park turning bad when the two lovers become hostages of a renegade soldier), there's subtle sophistication amidst the slapstick and seemingly brainless sketches.

Gyun-woo and the girl's love story, while adherent to formula, is laced with musings on fate and its roles in shaping that happy ending. Part of what makes My Sassy Girl such an enduring delight is that its romance is grounded not on predictable logic but on something more mysterious, something more in line with the mystical grooves of destiny. The girl is obsesses with the idea of people from the future living in the present. This obsession reflects in her writing, the way the film treatments she insists Gyun-woo read every time they go out would most likely involve heroes from the future repairing the present. The film treatments not only mirror her obsession, it also echoes her being burdened with an immense pain for which she needs to be rescued from, presumably by Gyun-woo.

Near the end of the film, a UFO zooms past the background as the girl reads Gyun-woo's letter from two years back in their rendezvous. Before that, Gyun-woo is surprised to see a live bullfrog inside the time capsule which the two of them buried two years ago. My Sassy Girl, while not relying completely on these hints that Gyun-woo and the girl's relationship is shaped by something more fantastical than mere destiny, adds charming curiosity to the film's descent to fairy tale convention, eventually making its conclusion more magical and imaginative. Actually, My Sassy Girl is exactly that, a magical and imaginative concoction that is sure to amuse those who merely seek extrication from the idiocy of Hollywood's banal offerings. It may not be great cinema, but it surely does its job well.

Woman on the Beach (2006)

Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
Korean Title: Haebyonui yoin

In one scene in Hong Sang-soo's Woman on the Beach, film director Jung-rae (Kim Seung-woo) draws a nebulous shape in his notepad; he draws three points in the shape which is connected to make a triangle. He explains to composer Mun-suk (Go Hyun-jung) the significance of the triangle (that it serves as a mnemonic tool that relates to an unsavory event in the past); he then draws several more points (all of which, he tells, pertain to more savory memories), and connects all the points making a complex polygon. He continues to explain that he is trying to remove himself from the triangle by expanding into the polygon in order to move on, and expects Mun-suk to help him.

The theory sounds a lot like bullshit; and Hong's intense detailing (complete with a zoom-in into the sketches in the notepad) makes it even more hilarious. However, this draws the line between Jung-rae and the all of Hong's embattled male characters; he is the only one who sought to escape the predestined rut by shaping up a rationale, a hypothesis behind the recurring events of his life. After watching the film of course, it doesn't seem that Jung-rae's clever rationalizations helped him; we again hear him (through a phone call to Mun-suk) explain how much he misses the girl, and how his leaving her is merely a retreat, a sign of weakness.

Woman in the Beach has Hong in his most geometric (and I believe Hong is a director who fancies triangles, structures, and angles to fetishistic proportions --- his films have always had love triangles and a meticulous attention to geometric blocking and detailed structuring). He starts out with a single love triangle (between Chang-wook (Kim Tae-woo), Mun-suk and Jung-rae). Observe Hong's aesthetics wherein he frequently uses zooms to negate one character, thus bringing attention to a couple, and then zooms out, to reveal the complete triangle. But well within the triangle of the first half of the film, are other off-screen triangles (Chang-wook is married but has Mun-suk as a girlfriend-on-the-side; Jung-rae is a recent divorcee).

The second half of the film has Hong complicating the triangle he has already made us familiar with, by introducing further characters such as Sun-hee (Song Seon-mi), a vacationer who is interviewed by a director, and her friend. We realize that Hong intends to complicate his themes (which makes Woman on the Beach into a more ambitious film compared to his previous efforts which have neatly packaged love triangles with very little complications --- Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000), Woman is the Future of Man (2004), Tale of Cinema (2005)). Triangles start overlapping, and identical points to the triangles start commingling, resulting into unexpected statements of humanity in the face of complex relationships.

What's the point of Hong's obsession with structures, shapes and the number three (love triangles, the three trees, trees which made Jung-rae knelt to, etc.)? We go back to one of the many themes (aside from the perpetual filmmaker-protagonists, the immature male characters, the drunken confessionals, the frank yet lifeless portrayals of copulation) that connect Hong's cinema. His structures, his persistence with basic mathematical imputations are the connective tissue that relate memory to human experiences and relationships, which he so nonchalantly paints in his films. Hong would always signal remembrance (the events and objects that connect the two divisions of the film, like the dog in the beach or the waiter offended by Jung-rae's impertinence; places which appear twice and invite remembrance like the rest stop or the empty room wherein Jung-rae and Mun-suk first had sex), as made more apparent by the chapters and the meticulousness to numerical detail.

The overlapping triangles seem to be residues of unshelled memories; they are mere repetitions of mistakes made or inflicted in the past, continuously haunting those chained to it (which almost all of Hong's characters are). The interesting bit about Woman on the Beach is that finally, Hong has created a character is now aware of the torturous cycles in life and relationships inflicted by the inescapable grasps of memory and tried to find a way out of it, flawed and convoluted as it may seem.

Time (2006)

Time (Kim Ki-duk, 2006)
Korean Title: Shi gan

Kim Ki-duk's thirteenth film Time opens with a montage of nearly unwatchable footages of an ongoing plastic surgery. The face is literally mangled, punctured, and mashed; fat flows from the tubes that pass through the inanimate body. It is the same video that is shown to a distraught Seh-hee (Park Yi-geon) before she finally decided to commit to plastic surgery and changing her appearance permanently. The pre-credit sequence takes a form of a caution both to the eager plastic surgery customer and also to Kim's audience. The film, while serving a perfunctory role as a scathing commentary on Korea's fetishism with plastic surgery, suggests something deeper, something more universal.

It starts out like a parable with Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo) and his girlfriend for two years Seh-hee. Seh-hee feels that Ji-woo is getting bored with her; to the point that she orders Ji-woo to think of another woman just to get him aroused enough to sleep with her. One day, Seh-hee disappears without telling Ji-woo. We know that she has opted to change her face, but in Ji-woo's mind, she just left her. Episodic sequences reveal to us Ji-woo's unsuccessful attempts to find love. A rather memorable attempt involves an unattractive lady Ji-woo hooks up with in a blind date; the end of the date is so poignantly conceived furthering Kim's angry accusations of the Korean male population's inability to see beauty within.

Ji-woo does manage to hook up with a new girl, See-hee (Seong Hyeon-a), the new waitress in his favorite coffee shop. His unresolved romance with Seh-hee pervades this new interest; and despite the fact that Seh-hee and See-hee are one and the same person, the sudden change in physical attributes allude to a difference in persona. This may come off as utterly fantastical, as plastic surgery can only change so much and it also invites factual inconsistencies such as lovers of two straight years would have something more to discern each other than mere hand sizes and former pictures. Yet, this is a Kim Ki-duk film and it is also widely recognizable that Kim expands reality the way he makes a man disappear in 3-Iron (2004), or an arrow fly high to the heavens in The Bow (2005), or the self-inflicted violence in The Isle (2000), or the hurtful misogynism in Bad Guy (2001). In Time, Kim suggests plastic surgery as more than just physical change; such modifies the human core that all that is left from the past life are mere symbols and signifiers.

However, Time feels very different from Kim's later films (beginning with Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... Spring (2003) to The Bow). It doesn't dabble in existentialist subtleties or Orientalist philosophies. The film is as blunt as a sledgehammer and is as obvious as your favorite fairy tale. It takes its cautionary tale to excessive lengths, that it hurts Kim's more elusive attempts to say something deeper. I'm one of those who has an affinity with Kim's more silent features. There's always a sense that Kim's attempt to go back to his pre-Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... Spring ouvre can't really be definitely distinguished from the artist he has become. Time stands midway being dragged by Kim's opposite goals of provocation and meditation.

There were sequences which I thought were utterly sublime and consistent with Kim's ability to expand the natural dimensions of reality to propose something poetic --- Ji-woo and Seh-hee's lovemaking scene near the beginning where the latter forced the former to think of another girl (it's as painfully emotional to see lovemaking delegated as mere satisfaction); the breathtaking scenes in the sculpture park (the magnificent statues depict time in its most destructive and rejuvinating way, with the tide burying most of the statues in seawater only to reappear new yet the same --- as opposed to the characters' will to stop time by completely modifying their physical attributes); See-hee's desperate attempts to search for Ji-woo (the Cinderella twist to the runaway lover as the crystal shoe is replaced by the perfect hand).

However, all the episodes I liked are drowned by the inconsistent sentimentality and questionable resulting decisions by the main characters (and Kim): the sudden decision for what seems to be a pay-back by Ji-woo (he begs the plastic surgeon to take over his mental faculties and decide for him); the questionable inability for confrontation (it seems that love is as facile as their physical modifications, thus turning their relationship into a hide and seek game); and the overachieving conclusion that unsuccessfully suggests the continuum of the misfortunes from these neverending adventures to the plastic surgeon.

Dasepo Naughty Girls (2006)

Dasepo Naughty Girls (Lee Je-yong, 2006)
Korean Title: Dasepo sonyo

A teacher walks in on a class composed of uniformed and attractive students, excusing himself as a replacement for their teacher who got an STD, allegedly for sleeping with teen prostitutes. The teacher tells a chubby student to have herself checked for the STD; the student replies that she doesn't sleep with teachers. The substitute quickly replies that their professor's STD is syphillis (which I believe can be transmitted through oral sex). The student excuses herself, followed by another, and another, and another, and another until one is left --- Cyclops (Lee Kyeon), who really has only one eye. The pre-credit gag segues to pink-attired female dancers performing the film's upbeat song accompanied by a bevy of kitsch, camp, and colorful zaniness.

Dasepo Naughty Girls is a film that has an exterior of a wacky sexy romp. It is episodic with each episode mostly consisting of gags, jokes, and bloopers --- all of which are inconsistently fleshed out; some are quite hilarious while the rest are tiring and confusing. It is unceasing in its irreverence and political incorrectness with characters ranging from a poor girl (Kim Ok-bin, she is by herself a walking, talking stereotype) who supports her single mom (Im Hye-jin, who absent-mindedly sells pyramids for a pyramid scheme, haha) and little brother, a rich exchange student (Park Jin-woo) who suddenly questions his sexuality when he falls for a beautiful lady who turns out to be a pre-operation trannie, a thug boss (Lee Weon-jong) who gets a kick out of wearing teen girl's uniforms, the aforementioned single-eyed and lone virgin of the film's high school, among other weirdos.

Director Lee Je-yong (or E J-young, his cooler, hipper name), whose previous feature was the ultra-serious and uber-sexy Korean remake of Dangerous Liaisons entitled Untold Scandal (2003), infuses the film with enough artistry and intelligence to keep the film from sinking in gag show and sitcom tedium. There are clever touches --- overt metaphors that somewhat matches the film's consistently un-subtle means of reaching into its audiences brains and subconscious. There's that doll named poverty hanging from poor girl's shoulders; there's the diversity of religions being taught in "No Use" high school; there's those pyramids for sale in the pyramid-ing scheme; and a whole lot more.

The film is a kaleidoscope of dumb sex jokes, visual humor, directorial statements (successfully or unsuccessfully relayed), and storylines bursting out of sheer absurdity. These storylines include a principal possessed by a mythical monster who espouses the virtue of virginity to the students of the high school, an underground cult that kidnaps virgins for the purpose of releasing potential erotic energy, and more. The film's lack of structure, its glaring and voluntary ineptitude, its rebellious nature are both its success and its failure.

It's irreverent, but not enough to force you to re-think adopted norms and ideals. It is indeed campy fun when it doesn't make sense and just streams along in wild fanciful abandon. Yet, whenever it starts to slow down to deliver a coherent thought, it fluctuates and becomes an utter boredom. So how does one enjoy a film like Dasepo Naughty Girls? It's quite simple, I thought. Just treat it like a movie caught accidentally one lazy Sunday morning. It's quite intelligently made but none of the intelligence can pass through that force field of utter campiness, so the only thing to do left, is to sit back and enjoy this colorful and musical romp.

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002)

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong Sang-soo, 2002)
Korean Title: Saenghwalui balgyeon

The titles of Hong Sang-soo films are by themselves exquisite works of art. Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000) is a bastardization of the title of Marcel Duchamp's artwork; Duchamp's art itself turning into a sort of formal instruction for Hong's narrative experimentations. It is actually quite unfortunate that Hong's fourth film, its international title is On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate, is abridged merely for commercial and practical convenience without recognizing the implications of the abridgment.

More popularly referred to as merely Turning Gate (the title of the film in its American DVD release), the film is conveniently straightforward but like Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, it can be logically divided into two distinct parts. The first part involves the typical Hong man-child Gyung-soo (Kim Sang-kyung), an actor whose last film was a commercial flop, who sojourns to a remote tourist town to visit his childhood friend. While vacationing, he is introduced to dancer Myung-sook (Ye Ji-won) who becomes romantically attached to him. The second part of the film concerns Gyung-soo's unexpected detour on his way back to Seoul. He meets Seon-young (Sang Mi Chu) on the train, follows her to her home, and becomes romantically and inconveniently linked to her, despite the knowledge that she is already married.

While touring an ancient Buddhist temple, Gyung-soo is told of the tale of the turning gate --- about a peasant who falls in love with a princess but is killed by the princess' father; upon reincarnation, the peasant turns into a snake who traps the princess. The princess thus enters the buddhist temple's turning gate asking the snake to wait for her. After several hours, the snake becomes impatient and tries to enter the gate but is prevented by rain, and thunder; thus, convincing him to just turn back and walk away.

The convenient interpretation to the film is that it is a modern retelling of the ancient Korean fable; that Hong merely reconstructs the fable turning the peasant man into Gyung-soo, the princess as the married Seon-young and the supervening events as direct allegories to the ancient tale. However, I do not see it as simply as that and Hong is an artist more enamored by the psychological implications of the past and memories than by simplistic re-introductions of Korean culture into modern life.

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate concerns itself with the past and with that human ability to transport the past into the present --- through memories. Examine the first scene. Gyung-soo gets a call from a childhood friend, and a minute or two is spent in order for him to recall and place the voice with his reconstruction of the past. When his present state no longer suits his life (as when he wasn't cast as a player in a director's subsequent film), his escape mechanism is to go back to the past --- by visiting that childhood friend and as a side-effect, see the ancient places and hear the old tales. His relationship with Myung-sook turned sour and again, he seeks an escape; much further into the past.

Seon-young is at first a mere afterthought, a deviation from a relationship that within a few days rose and failed. Then, she gets re-introduced as an object of his past --- and Gyung-soo again undergoes the procedure of remembering her. Seon-young then becomes that object of Gyung-soo's past that he can never achieve and gain, but he perseveres. Alas, the knowledge of the tale of the turning gate consumes him. In the intertitle where we are led to believe that Gyung-soo remembers the tale of the turning gate, we become witnesses of the unwanted effects of a mis-remembered and mis-appropriated past. In Gyung-soo's case, he becomes impotent in bed, and is man-handled by the impression that he is the snake in the ancient fable. The conclusion of the film is more of a signifier that Hong has completed his uncomfortable exploration of a man who is unable to reconcile the past and the present (with his uncommon inability to remember, or remember correctly), and not merely as a closing to a modern and straightforward re-telling of an ancient Korean tale.

The utter simplification of the film's title gives you the impression that the film is merely about the tale, which for me is only one of the nuggets of the past that Gyung-soo would have to wrestle with. The film is much more than that --- it concerns the act of remembrance and of inviting oneself to an unexplored past. Hong gives us clues --- prolonged moments that connote both the serenity and chaos of remembering, that book written by the centennial author who killed himself (I'd like to believe that a hundred years on Earth would invite further misapprehensions with the past), the dual-format observed, and the almost coincidental re-acquaintances with objects of Gyung-soo's past.

Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000)

Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo, 2000)
Korean Title: Oh! Soo-jung

I remember my first time, my metaphorical devirginization, into Hong Sang-soo's cinema. It was nowhere near the portrayed deflowering in this feature, wherein Soo-jung (Lee Eun-ju) uncomfortably lies in bed and is assisted into the perfect position by her boyfriend Young-soo (Mun Seong-kun). She cries and pleads to her boyfriend that he be gentle; and when the first thrust is done, pain, pleasure and resolution coincides to make her face slightly smiling, slightly grimacing, and slightly tearful. It was nowhere near that dramatic when I saw my first Hong film, Woman is the Future of Man (2004). My deflowering was uneventful, droll, and quite fittingly numb; the second, third and fourth times were much more pleasurable, wherein the little details, the intelligent framings and editing, the cerebral form, the voluntary lack of music to incorporate the depth of the background noise heighten the experience to near climactic satisfaction.

Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors is Hong's third feature film. It is his only film in black and white --- he accuses color of giving "viewers more than they need." It is also very formal --- call cards of questionable intentions separate episodes; which are further separated by numbers. It's a cognitive illusion that Hong guides you in a step-by-step like manner; the film is structured like a masterplan, opening with a curious dilemma of the sexually persistent guy being stood up by his girlfriend inside a hotel room. Hong then methodically dissects the problem by narratively detailing the history of their relationship; he then traces the missteps and possible errors in mnemonic assessment or emotional understanding, before indulging us with the surprising yet inevitable outcome of devirginization. The process is dehumanizing yet quite understandable in this queer scenario.

The plot is concentrated on that single act: to have Soo-jung devirginized. It's been said that virginity is a state of mind; Soo-jung's elusive treasure is not innocence or purity (those virtues, we know, are not part of her mental picture), but physiological virginity. It's that knowledge that brought a twinkle in Young-soo's eyes and would lead him to endlessly torture himself to just witness and experience such breaking. It is also Hong's biggest joke, amidst the numerous subtle observational ticklers (Young-soo, in the beginning, examines every corner of his hotel room for hidden cameras; perpetually interrupted acts of lovemaking). Hong pushes us to take part in believing the seriousness of the act, which, if placed in a rational perspective, is a mere anatomical illusion of womanhood, and nothing more. The extent and gravity society and its participating characters, including the ever-cerebral Hong, attributes the first time provides for the hugest chuckle of them all.

And it's all the same for Hong. He accomplishes the feat with tender precision. Each frame, each sequence, each scene is composed lovingly that it's easy to get lost in the black and white timeless feel of modern Korea where street lamps and headlights glare with muted and romantic intensity. The exchanges of dialogue, the misplaced and dubious scenes that somewhat came out of nowhere (the sideplot involving Soo-jung's brother leaves a dry taste in one's cinephiliac palette), the confusing or complicated temporal or imaginary stretches in narrative structure --- all these merely point out the vaporous style of Hong's cinema, wherein characters move, talk, and feel like real men and women do, although they are carefully observed through an obtrusive filmic magnifying glass.

Beautiful, complex, arrestingly humorous, and numbing in its anti-romanticism, Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors also criticizes the Korean male as servants of a mutated mixture of their heart and gonads. They easily swoon under the temptations of the pheromones of an easy, unvirtuous yet virginal female; the swooning lets them forget about friendships, professionalism, family, and respect. In the end, like that abruptly stopped cable car Soo-jung rides to finally let go of that fool's gold she jealously guards with her hands and panties, they are left hanging with the normalcy of a relationship that is not colored by that fetishistic attraction with hymen. The somewhat sweet ending where the two lovers embrace inside a well-lit hotel room will inevitably betrayed when both are left hanging, not with tight loving hugs and kisses, but with the cries and whimpers of family life.

******
This post is my contribution to Hell on Frisco Bay's Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors The Blog-A-Thon.

Feathers in the Wind (2004)

Feathers in the Wind (Song Il-gon, 2004)
Korean Title: Git

It all started with a promise similar to the one made in the end of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995). Two young lovers agree to meet again in that same motel in a remote rural island after ten years. Filmmaker Hyeong-seong (Jang Hyeong-seong) return to the island a decade after; seeking a closure from that first relationship that kept him rooting against Germany during soccer matches and perpetually reminiscent of that former romance. He is unsure if his ex-girlfriend, who left for Europe to study piano-playing and later on marries her German professor, would stay true to that promise.

The pangs of waiting for that said event invade his persona. Right after completing a film he describes as a box office failure and a mediocrity, he tries to write his second screenplay but is unable to do so because of the more impending matters that affect him. In the island, he is taken care of by the motel's caretaker, a jovial yet undeniably sweet girl named So-yeon (Lee So-yeon). Underneath the violent stormy weather are other extrinsic events that would add a touch of mysticism to Hyeong-seong's island getaway; a mysterious peacock lands in the island's rocky beaches, a piano being delivered by an unknown sender to the remote island, So-yeon's bleached-haired uncle awaits for his wife who left him and afflicted him with the lack of desire to talk, and finally, the image of So-yeon lonesomely dancing the tango with her hair distinguished by a single feather.

As with his first feature Flower Island (2001), Song Il-gon utilizes digital stock to capture the beauty of Udo Island. Originally commissioned as part of an omnibus film that would tackle issues on environmentalism, Feathers in the Wind expanded into a seventy minute feature that simply oozes with a subtle romantic fever brought about by a mixture of common love tropes (as with the premise that seems to originate from Linklater's more famous film) and Song's use of injecting mythical and mystical fuel to his narrative. It results in an endeavor that evolves with an unrushed passionate push; that when the climax starts to slide comfortably from the relaxed narrative, a more enhanced swooning emotion is felt --- the Hollywood trope fascinatingly meshes with the more individualistic moods of Song with remarkable grace.

Hyeong-seong and So-yeon's affair is something that doesn't blossom; it just happens --- probably because of their respective reasons; So-yeon's freshness offers a curative antidote to Hyeong-seong's relational hurts while Hyeong-seong's air of mystery pushes So-yeon to opt to discover and experience. Actually, their initial conversations never go deeper the same way Jesse and Celine initially sparked conversations on life, death, philosophy and culture in Linklater's films. The conversations never fathom the inevitabilities of attraction, probably at its most subtle, it only tangentially scrapes the possibilities of the two longing for each other. Through games, requests, and little favors, something erupts and the effect, although largely predictable, has a gravity that is quite surprising; that when Hyeong-seong finally leaves the island, and So-yeon rushes with her uncle to say their belated farewells and an acceptance of another challenge to meet up in a certain place after a year, it comes off as totally impromptu and more emotionally resonating.

Feathers in the Wind is Song Il-gon in his most basic, most unembellished, and simplest. Yet from the simplicity of the picture, from the numerous grains and pixelations of his digitally captured visuals, from the intimacy of his subject, and the earnest existence of his very few characters and their individual needs, he arrives at his most resounding and emotionally truthful work.

Flower Island (2001)

Flower Island (Song Il-gon, 2001)
Korean Title: Ggot seom

Other than Yu-jin (Lim Yu-jin), who we first meet narrating how she got punished by the gods for abandoning her promise of using her gift of song for good, we get introduced to the trio of females in very compromising scenarios. Seventeen year-old Hye-na (Kim Hye-na) undergoes a self-inflicted abortion inside a filthy restroom; while motherly Oak-nam (Seo Ju-hie) bares herself for a paying elderly man who after several sexual thrusts, dies of a cardiac arrest. Oak-nam is temporarily discharged by her husband who learns of her prostituting to buy her daughter a piano. She meets Hye-na inside during a busride to the Southern Seas --- Hye-na is on a trip to find her lost mother while Oak-nam seeks the legendary Flower Island, said to be the place to ease pains and burdens.

We finally witness Yu-jin compromising scenario when an impersonal doctor announces her medical predicament --- her tongue has to be removed to prevent the spreading of a cancerous growth in her throat. An opera singer, she loses the will to live, until she is rescued by Oak-nam and Hye-na who brings her along their trip to Flower Island. The three females undergo what seems like a roadtrip to an Oz-like place of magic and promises; along the way, they meet colorful characters who in their respective manners and ways, allow a tender and subtle release of each female's personal ache. A truck driver who carries his friend's corpse to town, a traveling music band led by jealous singer and his life partner, a mysterious man who lived with Hye-na's mother, and the proprietress of the island --- these personalities and their anecdotes and methods represent the promises of the island.

Lodz-trained Song Il-gon's directorial debut, Flower Island, is fashioned like several pieces of individual memories forcedly pasted together, like the coincidental meet-ups of these three troubled women. The point-of-view is always past-oriented, with the narrative being interrupted by flashbacks; as if there's a likely prevention of moving forward, of an outward acceptance as the world has been swallowed by the lasting scars of a troubled past.

Song's method of using digital film to capture the happenings creates an unfathomable viewing experience. The lack of detail (caused by digital filmmaking) causes a frustrating feeling of being trapped within the meager extents of the medium. Bodies and faces fade and disappear from focus; objects do not have their concrete appeal; experiences and events therefore are appropriated a fleeting feel, like they're happening not in this real world but in a mythical other-universe wherein pains and aches are as temporary as the captured movements and conversations. It's oddly mesmerizing; wherein the visual technique inhabits the poetic form Song drapes his feature with.

The film's ending is both mysterious but unsurprising. It adequately gives the feature an earthy and mortal conclusion without necessarily pulling away from the fairy-tale feel of this grim yet hopeful parable. Song possesses an admirable control on his vision and his themes; something quite surprising as this is his first feature film. The film aches when it needs to ache, and its joyous when there's a reason to celebrate --- yet despite the numerous facets of emotions on display, the film is headed in a single direction; no tricky shortcuts or long-winded stop-overs. Flower Island is one satisfactory road trip where emotions swell in every step, that when the destination is reached and leaves you still cold and curious, there still seems to be no trace of regret and remorse in traversing such path.

Woman is the Future of Man (2004)

Woman is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004)
Korean Title: Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda

I saw Hong Sang-soo's Woman is the Future of Man a couple of years back. I was not very impressed; it was probably because it's my first time to get into Hong's cinema (my encounters with Hong's films thereafter turned out to be more fulfilling experiences). I thought it was the right time for a re-evaluation of the film, and with that, prepared myself with a clear mind so that I can get past the cryptic grooves of Hong's filmmaking.

The film starts with a reunion of two acquaintances, Mun-ho (Yu Ji-tae), a Western art professor struggling for university tenure, and Hyeon-gon (Kim Tae-woo), struggling filmmaker who just came back from America. It's an awkward meeting; Mun-ho meets Hyeon-gon outside his gated house, excusing the fact that he can't invite his friend inside and as a consolation, gives Hyeon-go the opportunity to first step on the newly formed inches of snow in his garden. Hyeon-gon does so; walks backwards to a certain point and re-steps back so that it looks like he only walked in one direction. The duo proceed to drink in a local restaurant; again, uncomfortably re-aquainting themselves with their respective pasts.

Awkwardness defines the duo. Both of their tries at flirting with the waitress fail (Hyeon-gon pretends to cast the waitress in her film; Mun-ho pretends to hire the waitress as a nude art model), leading to their respective flashbacks of their relationship with Seon-hwa (Seong Hyeon-a). The flashbacks lend a hazy rationale as to why the duo would later on visit Seon-hwa in her bar in Puchon. I believe the greater rationale as to why the two would ride a taxi and spend the night, and the next day with Seon-hwa is to find a sense of resolution to a love affair and to a sexually dependent college life they used to have.

I realized why I easily dismissed the film at first glance. Hong's methods were deceptively slight; his narrative is punctuated with atypical temporal shifts before straightforwardly going places without a sober sense of sticking with a character. A couple of years after my initial viewing, the filmmaking felt justified --- after all, Hong's characters are always in a drunken confessional while baring their unguarded personalities for all the world to scrutinize. The way Hong handled his themes which easily overpowers narrative flow and characterization complements the impermanent needs, sexual and otherwise, of his characters. Mun-ho decides immediately after meeting a group of his former students to forego going to the spring with Seon-hwa and Hyeon-go; in a fit of jealousy, Hyeon-go leaves Seon-hwa behind; Mun-ho finally shifts sexual gaze to his ex-student and brings her to a filthy motel --- Hong's characters are in a constant search for satisfaction that once the confrontation of an open-ended past felt inutile, the search begins anew.

It is that jarring face-off of the psycho-sexual neediness of the Korean adult and that facade of contentment (a gated hill-top house, a beautiful wife, tenure in the university) that makes this Hong feature more compelling than it looks to be. Hong captures everything with humorous detail; even supposedly shocking events like Seon-hwa's rape is abruptly "cured" by Hyeon-go's lovemaking, Mun-ho's cluelessness in thinking that girls' legs are naturally smooth, Seon-hwa's noting that the chip in her tooth makes her blowjobs more delightful. It certainly feels like Hong denotes these seemingly adult confrontations and meet-ups as akin to the fancifulness and predictability of child's play.

The Host (2006)

The Host (Bong Joon-ho, 2006)
Korean Title: Gwoemul

Bong Joon-ho begins The Host with a sequence inspired by actual events: in a nearby U. S. military facility, an American orders his Korean subordinate to dispose bottles of formaldehyde in the facility's sink, which would eventually end up in the Han River. The subordinate unwillingly follows his superior's orders; grey smoke appears from the sink while Bong horizontally moves his camera to show us the multitudes of formaldehyde bottles that have been emptied to the river. Bong cuts to two men fly fishing in the banks of the Han; one fisherman observes a weird creature swimming in his bait cup --- Bong captures this moment in the evolutionary tale of The Host's monster in a wide shot of the Han River; we get a glimpse of the metropolis blanketed by a thick layer of pollution and smog. We initially get a sense of what Bong is getting at --- it's not necessarily finger pointing, but he makes it a point that the monster that we will soon see rampaging and murdering did not appear from thin air, but is a result of a combination of human or more specifically Korean errors (pollution, American presence).

The Host is a monster flick in the same vein as Ishirô Honda's Gojira (1954). Both films are reactionary social commentaries, while delivering the no-brainer fun and punch of its genre. However, Instead ofBong's film features a family in its center: the store-owning grandfather (Byun Hee-bong), absent-minded father (Song Kang-ho), his two more successful but not-that-successful siblings, Olympic archer sister (Bae Doo-na) and alcoholic and unemployed recent college grad brother (Park Hae-il). The family (a sort of opposite universe version of Brad Bird's superhero family in The Incredibles (2004)) unite to try to dodge governmental intrusion (the family is branded as infected by a deadly virus supposedly carried by the monster) while inching their way to salvaging Song Kang-ho's on screen daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung) from the monster's lair.

The monster (a CGI-creation by San Francisco-based Orphanage FX) is an intriguing anomaly. It is no doubt a mutant drafted by years of environmental mismanagement; appendages sprout out of its armored body which looks like a mixture of a legged amphibian, a trout, and a parasitic worm. The CGI-work is near-seamless and Bong makes sure that the monster actually inhabits its environment; its tail makes it adept in bridge acrobatics, its fish-like fins make it superiorly amphibious, its gastro-intestinal make-up is developed for its rather bashful means of feeding on its victims (the monster keeps its victims safe in its inner-sewer lair to feast on them moments after their capture). The design is absolutely horrific --- definitely years and technologies after the rubber suited men/monsters of Gojira and its numerous subsequent spin-offs.

It's all superbly juggled by director Bong. His natural knack for comedy, his talent for judicious and economically placed characterization, his visual derring-do (the initial sequences with the monster features it basking under the bright rays of the Korean sun; very difficult and brave especially since he's using an entirely CGI-creation) which inevitably works very well, his satirical stance on pollution and America's need to invade on other nation's sovereignty (and the accompanying problem of Korea's eternal subservient attitude to America's bullying), his impressive gift of appropriating these big issues in what essentially is an intimate quest to save a family member: all these positive traits turn The Host from an ordinary monster flick to what may be an instant classic that can proudly sit beside the most memorable cinematic monsters of all time.

The Isle (2000)

The Isle (Kim Ki-duk, 2000)
Korean Title: Seom

It was The Isle that elevated Kim Ki-duk to international acclaim. The Isle is Kim's fifth entry to a filmography that consists primarily of films which may be bluntly be considered misogynist and cruel. The Isle tops almost everything that Kim showed in previous efforts such as Bad Guy (2001) and Birdcage Inn (1998), with an almost silent-tale of a weird romantic interlude between a mute proprietress (Jung Suh) of a fishing resort and one of the guests, a criminal (Kim Yoo-suk) being hunted down by the police.

Perhaps more shocking than the entire pic are the individual images and scenes that made the film achieve its art cult status. There's an array of scenes that seems to gratuitously show cruelty to animals: a fish is caught and its fleshed made into fresh sashimi and then thrown back to the lake as it swims its bloody body to safety, several fishes are mashed and haphazardly chopped to death, a frog is caught and brutally skinned and fed to a bird, the same bird is then drowned, a dog is beaten without any reason.

However, more shocking are the individual scenes that concern the actions of the two main characters. In an effort to evade police patrolmen searching the floating houses for escaped criminals, the guest swallows four fishing hooks and hides inside a hole which serves as the house's lavatory. The same way, in an effort to call the attention of the guest who suddenly left the floating house one morning, the proprietress inserts fishing hooks inside her vagina. The scenes are shocking and instantly calls for attention and interpretation. Kim's shock cinema isn't clearly meant for gratuitous entertainment nor plot movement, but for symbolism and deep interpretation.

As cryptic as the scenes of cruelty is the ending. The floating house drifts from the lake to what seems like a vast ocean. Then cuts the concluding image of the man entering a solitary isle of lake grass and disappears therein. Kim zooms out the image, revealing the naked body of the proprietress and the same grassy isle in the place where the vagina (or more accurately, the pubic area) should be. It's an excruciatingly open-ended conclusion that is pregnant with many interpretations. Is Kim trying to wash away his misogynistic artistry by telling his audience that men are the weaker sex and that they merely hide their weakness using the female body? More far-fetched but more interesting is the idea that the final scene shows an exact opposite of a woman giving birth --- with the male entering the uterus, it's a skewed imagery of motherhood but the setting (the proprietress, naked and submerged in water) suggests the validity of the theory.

In the end, The Isle is indeed a compelling yet misguided romance. The boy and the girl spend more time away from each other, using the glare of the sunlight being thrown by a mirror to communicate. Kim's direction suggests an outward alienation. The proprietress is mostly seen from outside a glass window, or when she is interacting with other human beings, she is mostly mute, and blank faced. Even when she's paid for sex, it's automatic and slightly cruel. More interesting is the fact that when the two find themselves together, it usually erupts in violence.

It's an unsettling relationship that developed from an understanding that the two or more different than they are similar. Both of them are manipulative but they jive because there is an understanding that their relationship requires that they both use each other, for sex, for survival, for escape. Kim suggests that within that lake resort where men seek solitude or an escape from the world, the most basic and most accurate of sexual politics between the man and the woman can be derived, as emphasized by the imperfect and mutated relationship between the proprietress and the man who is hiding from his past.