Life During Wartime

Spring in My Hometown (Areumdawoon sheejul). 1998. Written and directed by Lee Kwang-mo. Produced by Yu Seon-ho, Jeong Dae-sung, Kang Seong-kyu, and Jeong Tae-sung. Cinematography by Kim Hyung-ku. Edited by Ham Sung-won. Music by Won Il. Art direction by Kim Byeong-chan and Lee Su-geun. Costume design by Kim Gi-cheol, Yun Jun-sik, and Bong Hyeon-suk. Sound by Lee Seung-chul and Yang Dae-ho.

Cast: Ahn Sung-ki (Sung-min's father), Bae Yu-jeong (Chang-hee's mother), Kim Jung-woo (Chang-hee), Lee In (Sung-min), Oh Ji-hye (Teacher), Song Ok-sook (Sung-min's mother), Yu Oh-seong (Sung-min's uncle).

One of the best, and certainly most visually impressive, cinematic depictions of the Korean War, Spring in My Hometown takes a very different approach from other films on this subject. Lee Kwang-mo’s first feature, set in a small village adjoining a U.S. Army base, is quiet, contemplative, and nostalgic, taking place far from the battlefields, although no less lacking in drama and tragedy. The film’s compositions use a mostly static camera, long takes, and stunning landscape shots reminiscent of Breughel and Friedrich. The events of the war, relayed in title cards between the film’s episodes, are seen through the prism of the experiences of two boys, Sung-min (Lee In), and his friend Chang-hee (Kim Jung-woo). The film’s narrative is seen through Sung-min’s eyes, and is structured by Sung-min’s memory of events.

The fortunes of the two boy’s families are sharply contrasted. Sung-min’s father (Ahn Sung-ki) works on the army base, taking advantage of his privileged position by earning extra money on the side smuggling goods from the base and pimping out local women for the U.S. soldiers. His father’s hustling allows Sung-min’s family to live comfortably, and in a much nicer house than their neighbors. Chang-hee’s family, on the other hand, lives under far less favorable circumstances. At the beginning of the film, Chang-hee’s father is dragged from a well and beaten by the other villagers, suspected of being a communist collaborator. Chang-hee’s father is eventually imprisoned, driving his family into increasingly desperate circumstances, leading to a major tragedy around which the film pivots.

There are many arresting and memorable images: black military uniforms on clotheslines dotting the landscape; fighting bugs; peephole shots of the boys spying on the GIs having sex in an abandoned mill with the women supplied by Sung-min’s father; and landscapes that bring to mind those in the films of Tarkovsky and Kiarostami. The U.S. presence in Korea is pervasive in this film, and appropriately, American objects and representation play a major role: the radio Sang-min’s father smuggles from the base; the American history lessons in the village schoolhouse; the army jeeps parked outside the mill; the lighter Chang-hee steals from a soldier, which fuels the film’s tragedy.

Although Spring in My Hometown has been criticized for subsuming the horrors of war beneath its stately pace and impeccable compositions, the film nonetheless beautifully captures the way children would perceive such events. Their relative innocence and ignorance of politically significant events (supplied in the film’s title cards alongside Sang-min’s memories) allows then to find humor and beauty amid desperation and tragedy. Lee was inspired to make this film, which he began writing ten years before eventually realizing it, by reading his father’s diaries. This material has allowed him to craft a visually arresting portrait of a time that remains an open wound in Korean history.

Spring in My Hometown will screen at the Korea Society on January 24 at 6:30.

Additional reading: Offscreen's interview with Lee Kwang-mo. (If you are spoiler-averse, read this after seeing the film.)

Review Archive: Bruno Dumont's "L’Humanité"

Happy New Year!

This year is already looking very promising, with many interesting new releases, film series, and retrospectives. While I work on some new pieces, I thought I would post some of my older reviews, some of which were written for a film website that is now defunct. Now they'll finally have a home, along with some previously unpublished reviews. I'll begin with my very first published review.

L’Humanité. 1999. Written and directed by Bruno Dumont. Produced by Rachid Bouchareb and Jean Bréhat. Cinematography by Yves Cape. Edited by Guy Lecorne. Music by Richard Cuvillier. Production design by Marc-Philippe Guerig. Costume design by Nathalie Raoul. Sound by Jean-Pierre Laforce and Pierre Mertens.

Cast: Emmanuel Schotté (Pharaon De Winter), Séverine Caneele (Domino), Philippe Tullier (Joseph), Ghislain Ghesquère (Police Chief), Ginette Allegre (Eliane), Daniel Leroux (Nurse), Arnaud Brejon de la Lavergnee (Conservationist).

In this age of digital cinema, hi-def, and ever-increasingly sophisticated special effects, and in many cases, increasingly soulless and mind-numbing popcorn-and-soda movies, it is a bracing blast of fresh air to see a film that eschews all of this smoke-and-mirror action to focus on real, plausible human characters. This is exemplified by a beautiful, baffling, ambiguous, and ultimately courageous little film called L’Humanité, from French director Bruno Dumont [whose latest film Flanders I reviewed here last year]. Dumont’s previous film was La Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus), which dealt with a brutal, none-too-bright punk living in a small, rural town whose life is inexplicably touched by divinity. At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, L’Humanité, along with the top prizewinner, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Rosetta, was one of The Little French Films That Could, coming from seemingly out of nowhere to grab all of the top prizes.

L’Humanité was quite controversial and unpopular at Cannes, and understandably so. Dumont’s film brazenly flies in the face of just about convention of storytelling, character, pacing, and mood we have been used to seeing in films. The basic skeleton of the film’s “plot” (in quotes for reasons that will soon be clear) is one we’ve seen in thousands of films: a police investigation of the rape and murder of a young girl (in this case, very young, about 11 or 12). This is a scenario which has just about been done to death, and the predictable outlines of this type of story are too familiar to even bother rehashing here. L’Humanité, far from being even a radical interpretation or variation on this tale, almost completely ignores the conventions altogether.

A brief description of the film’s opening, an arresting set of images, will give you an idea of what I’m talking about. The first image is a field, a high grassy hill. We hear footsteps on the soundtrack, but can’t tell where they’re coming from. After a couple of minutes, we see a tiny figure walking across the top of the hill; the camera rests, unmoving, until the man walks out of the frame. Cut to a close shot of the man walking, the camera following him closely. Suddenly, the man falls, hard. He lies on the ground, unmoving. Cut to a close-up of the man’s face, eyes staring blankly. At first, it looks as if he is dead, until we see he is breathing. Cut to the dead girl’s body, lying in the grass. Then an extreme close-up of the girl’s spread-eagled legs, the camera looking straight up into the girl’s vagina. Back to the man, who gets up, crawling on the ground. We think: is he the murderer? But then, he crawls over to a police car, opens the door, and speaks into the walkie-talkie, and we realize he is a cop. This is Dumont’s style: sharp, often raw images that force us to continually question what we are seeing. Just when we think we’ve caught on to a thread that will explain things, Dumont will throw an image at us that completely unsettles us. Dumont sustains this sense of ambiguity throughout the entire picture, quite a remarkable achievement.




Dumont also flouts the conventions of the police procedural by almost completely abandoning the investigation for over an hour, as we follow the daily life of the investigator, which oddly seems to consist of very little actual police work, other than a very cryptic scene early on at the police station where his boss chastises him for being out of it, and slacking off. The investigator, whose name we learn is Pharaon (Emmanuel Schotté), lives with his mother in a small house. We see minute, mundane details of his activities. He goes biking, eats an apple and nearly chokes on it, watches a soccer game. Dumont seems to almost perversely rob his story of any conventional action or suspense. Eventually, we see Pharaon interacting with a woman named Domino (Séverine Caneele) who lives a few doors down. Domino, not a particularly attractive woman in the conventional sense, works at a factory in town. It soon becomes clear that Pharaon is attracted to Domino. Domino, however, has a boyfriend, Joseph (Philippe Tullier), who visits frequently. In one of the film’s most striking scenes, Domino and Joseph engage in rough and extremely vigorous sex, while Pharaon watches them outside her open bedroom door. Domino seems to have genuine affection for Pharaon, and often invites him along on her dates with Joseph, who puts up with Pharaon for Domino’s sake, but treats him with barely concealed contempt. We are given very little information about these characters. For example, we learn that Pharaon “lost” his wife and daughter some years ago, but exactly what happened to them is never explained.


The performances in the film are quite unusual. It’s almost a misnomer to term what we see in this film “acting.” What Schotté, especially, does in this film seems too raw, too naked, too unpolished to be termed acting, at least in the normal sense. Schotté retains a wide-eyed, penetrating stare throughout the film, like an overgrown child. In fact, we wonder if his character is slow, or even slightly mentally retarded. And if so, how does someone such as this become a police superintendent? Such speculations, however, soon become increasingly unimportant. I interpret this character as an empath, someone who seemingly feels all of the world’s pain, to the extent that it may have wrecked his own mental health. The film’s title clues us in to the purpose of Pharaon’s character. We are meant to see him as a representative of humankind itself, in all its mystery, its ambiguity, its sexiness, its kindness, its evil. Pharaon, whose guilelessness and naked displays of emotion invite us to see him as a completely open book, nevertheless retains an unfathomable inner core. Dumont offers in L’Humanité an unflinching, unsettling look at people that we can believe actually exist. They are not forced to fit into pre-molded boxes, or packaged to be attractive people we can vicariously pretend to be. In a way, we are forced to look at ourselves and question our own knowledge of what we are. It is as if the film’s nominal subject, the rape/murder investigation, is only a red herring to bait us into this questioning of ourselves.

The film’s visual style perfectly matches its philosophy. Yves Cape’s beautiful widescreen photography and the sharp, precise editing by Guy Lecorne effectively illustrate the tension between the beauty of the landscape and the evil that occurs within it. There is an earthiness and rawness to the images that key in perfectly to Dumont’s themes. Pharaon’s face in the dirt, the dead little girl, Domino’s rough sex: Dumont practically rubs our face in the fact that these are all aspects of, and inseparable from, the “humanity” of the film’s title. The images provocatively link sex and death, but never in a pretentious or heavy-handed way. Dumont in this film (even more so than the more overtly religious La Vie de Jésus) proves himself to be a worthy cinematic heir to Robert Bresson, making a similar use of Bresson’s signature use of nonactors, direct sound, lack of music, and themes of transcendence and grace, despite certain major differences between the two in their approaches. Appropriately for a film that so sublimely uses its indelible images to tell its story, L’Humanité contains all its themes within its first image: the tiny figure walking on the hill. That figure is all of us: ultimately alone, surrounded by a vast landscape, a universe that, with our limited senses, we can hardly hope to completely understand.

Japanese Cinema Classics: Mikio Naruse's "Repast"

Repast (Meshi). 1951. Directed and edited by Mikio Naruse. Written by Toshiro Ide and Sumie Tanaka, based on the novel by Fumiko Hayashi. Scenario supervised by Yasunari Kawabata. Produced by Sanezumi Fujimoto. Cinematography by Masao Tamai. Music by Fumio Hayasaka. Art direction by Satoshi Chuko. Sound by Masao Fujiyoshi.

Cast: Ken Uehara (Hatsunosuke Okamoto), Setsuko Hara (Michiyo Okamoto), Yukiko Shimazaki (Satoko Okamoto), Yoko Sugi (Mitsuko Murata), Akiko Kazami (Seiko Tomiyasu), Haruko Sugimura (Matsu Murata), Ranko Hanai (Koyoshi Dohya), Kan Nihonyanagi (Kazuo Takenaka), Keiju Kobayashi (Shinzo Murata).

Repast, Mikio Naruse’s first adaptation of the work of celebrated Japanese novelist Fumiko Hayashi, is one of his very finest films, a deceptively simple examination of a troubled marriage, told with the penetrating insight and elegant images that made Naruse such an extraordinary artist. It features one of the greatest performances by the luminous Setsuko Hara, who was a master of gesture and glances which reveal her character without any dialogue needing to be spoken. Her line readings and inflections, sighs, and exclamations all draw us in and make us sympathize with this often opaque, mysterious and forbidding character. At the outset, Michiyo (Hara) is growing bored and frustrated with what she sees as her endlessly monotonous existence, cooking, cleaning, and looking after her husband, Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara). She seems to reserve most of her affection for her cat, Yuri. However, the couple seems to have reached a state of equilibrium in this situation, in which they have managed to submerge their mutual unhappiness beneath banal pleasantries.

This delicate balance is upset by the arrival of Hatsunosuke’s niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki), a flighty young woman who comes to their house for a refuge from her father and her impending marriage. To Michiyo’s dismay and growing anger, Hatsunosuke begins to lavish attention on his pretty and flirtatious niece, going with her on a bus tour of Osaka (which includes one of the film’s loveliest moments, when the cheerful tour guide suddenly breaks out into song), and seeking his own refuge from his unexciting home and office life. These and other events drive Michiyo to the breaking point, until she finally leaves home and stays at her parents’ house in Tokyo and even considers staying there to find a job.

Like most of Naruse’s films, most of the characters are unhappy, and this is their default mode. But as the final sublime moments prove, it is possible to find small moments of grace and greater meaning within this existence. As such, for me personally, this is a great film with which to end the year. Although as meticulous and precise in its own way as that other great master of Japanese cinema, Ozu, Naruse’s style is nearly invisible and quite naked, all the more for us to feel intensely for these characters and their struggles, even though it may on the surface seem quite artless and mundane. And as presented in a beautiful transfer from Masters of Cinema, which includes a nicely written booklet with articles by Audie Bock, Catherine Russell, and Phillip Lopate, and insightful audio commentary by Lopate and Kent Jones, Repast never ceases to amaze with its nearly effortless sublimity, representing the art of cinema at its finest.

Repast is included in a box set which includes two of Naruse’s other 50's films, Sound of the Mountain (1954) and Flowing (1956). Taken together, they are an excellent introduction to one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Masters of Cinema's Naruse box set can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Ladies of the Night

Whispers and Moans (Singkungtsoktse supyat tam). 2007. Directed by Herman Yau. Written by Yeeshan Yang and Herman Yau, based on the book by Yeeshan Yang. Produced by Ng Kin Hung. Cinematography by Puccini Yu. Edited by Yau Chi Wai. Music by Brother Hung. Art direction by Raymond Kwok.

Cast: Athena Chu (Madame Coco), Candice Yu (Jenny), Mandy Chiang (Nana), Monie Tung (Aida), Patrick Tang (Tony), Dan Li (Joey), Yan Ng (Elise), Misia Chan (Happy).

Despite its rather misleading title, Herman Yau’s film is no soft-core, exploitative extravaganza, but rather an un-romanticized depiction of the lives of several prostitutes who work out of a hostess club. The film’s sense of realism is due in large part to its source material, as it is based on Yeeshan Yang’s book of interviews with real-life sex workers. The business is constantly threatened by most of the other clubs moving to Shenzhen, China, and Mainland Chinese girls flooding the sex-trade market, leaving everyone in a financially and emotionally precarious state. Visual depictions of the sex act are almost completely elided in this film, to highlight the fact that everything is strictly business. One of the girls, who calls herself Happy (Misia Chan), prides herself on remaining clean and professional, and when that is compromised by one of her colleagues, she launches into an angry rant about all of the sacrifices she has put herself through for her profession.

Much of the material here is quite familiar from other films depicting the sex trade. In fact, there are some interesting comparisons to be made with another film, Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales. However, while that film depicted a bright fantasy world filmed on a soundstage, Yau’s film strives for greater verisimilitude. Although there are many elements that could be easily played for melodrama – Nana (Mandy Chiang) hides her work from her boyfriend, Aida (Monie Tung) is a raging heroin addict who is soon reduced to plying her trade on the streets, Madame Coco (Athena Chu) is embroiled in successive romantic entanglements with different men – at every point this is undercut with a sense of world-weariness imparted by these women who have seen everything, and have gained experience well beyond their years.

Money is the lifeblood of this scenario, and the subject around which everything in this film revolves. Everyone needs it, tries to save it, loses it, gives it away, and everything is negotiable. The threat of disease hangs over it all, and the anxious time while waiting for the test results for syphilis or AIDS is the most agonizing occupational hazard. One man infected with syphilis causes extreme anxiety for two of his sex partners: Madame Coco, who at one point pulls her daughter out of daycare to get tested, afraid that she may have infected the girl with her tears; and Joey (Dan Li), his transsexual consort.

The large cast is quite good, and their conflicts are deftly woven into the fabric of this vibrant world. There is an admirable lack of moral judgment and exploitation, and everyone is sympathetic in their own way. Even Elise (Yan Ng), the social activist attempting to organize the girls into a union in order to defend their rights and fight the societal stigmatization and law enforcement harassment that they must endure, and who could easily be held up for ridicule because of her do-gooder naïveté, is treated with as much dignity and respect for her views as any of the other characters. In all, this is a remarkably mature and subtly observed work from a director who has made some of the most extreme and outré films in Hong Kong cinema, such as The Untold Story (a serial killer cooks his victims into pork buns) and Ebola Syndrome (self-explanatory). Be forewarned: viewers in search of cheap titillation will have to look elsewhere, as there isn’t a single sex scene in this film. But those who can get over their disappointment at the lack of naked flesh will find an intelligent and perceptive work. Even though the film’s aggressively materialist approach to its subject, as well as the lengthy speeches given by some of the characters, sometimes threatens to tip over into didacticism, Whispers and Moans nevertheless impresses with its bracing humanism and its freewheeling, Altmanesque style.

Whispers and Moans can be purchased from YesAsia.com.

The Role of Her Life

Ad-Lib Night (Aju teukbyeolhan sonnim). 2006. Written and directed by Lee Yoon-ki, based on a short story by Azuko Taira. Produced by Lee Yoon-ki and Yun Il-jung. Cinematography by Choi Sang-ho. Edited by Kim Hyeong-ju. Music by Kim Jeong-beom. Art direction by Kim Seong-dal. Costume design by Jeon Hong-ju. Sound by Steve R. Seo.

Cast: Han Hyo-ju, Kim Yeong-min, Choi Il-hwa, Kim Jung-gi, Shin Yeong-jin, Yoon Hee-seok, Yeo Min-gu.

Lee Yoon-ki’s third feature Ad-Lib Night, based on a short story by Japanese author Azuko Taira, is an intimate and beautifully observed drama which takes place, as per the title, mostly over the course of a single night. Within this compressed time frame, Lee’s searching and perceptive camera-eye shows us a world of pain, humor, and revelation, delivered with the finely honed attention to detail and human psychology he was so adept at in his first feature, This Charming Girl (2004), and in his second, the underrated Love Talk (2005). His latest film, like his debut, has a woman (Han Hyo-ju) at its center, whose true identity isn’t revealed until a startling and poignant scene near the conclusion. She is accosted while on her way to meet someone by two men who mistake her for Myeong-eun, the long-estranged daughter of a dying man. After a protracted, and nicely staged, scene in which after much argument back and forth they slowly realize that she is not who they thought she was, they convince her to pose as this long-lost daughter in order to fulfill the dying man’s wish to see his daughter one last time. They travel far from Seoul to their small town, where the other members of the family are keeping a night-long vigil, since he is so near death.

The set-up is quite simple, but this works all the more to highlight this film’s considerable virtues. Ad-Lib Night is shot almost entirely handheld, with the camera often very close to the actors, and both the family conflicts and the provincial nature of the small town are laid bare over the course of this long night. The scenes of the family arranged in a circle, first debating over whether to go through with the plan to deceive the dying man, and later fighting amongst themselves over long-simmering internal grievances, are vividly rendered by the excellent ensemble cast. In these scenes, the missing daughter looms even larger by her absence. And as we do with many of the characters, aspects that are revealed about them force us to cast aside our initial judgments of them. Myeong-eun, who at first seems to be “unfilial daughter,” as one family member puts it, becomes a more sympathetic figure as we get to know more about the family she left behind. “Now I see why she went away,” one of the young men observes late in the film, as he talks to Myeong-eun’s stand-in.

This film, as much as anything else, is about acting, or more precisely, performance, in both art and life. Interestingly, both the Korean title, which translates as “A Very Special Guest,” and the English title contain references to the performing arts. The young woman is indeed a “special guest” actor in the intense family drama she witnesses, and she must “ad-lib” her way through this night. She rehearses her one line – “Father, I’m sorry” – repeatedly on the long drive to the family home. In one funny scene, after one of the men criticizes the young woman for not being convincing enough, the other retorts, “We’re not shooting a film.”

The young woman, whose role is supposedly so essential, is quickly shunted to the side and is kept peripheral to the family’s squabbling. She spends most of her time in Myeong-eun’s room, searching through her possessions and trying to get some sense of who this lost daughter was. She remains a silent enigma throughout the film, raising many questions, not the least of which is why she allows herself to be brought along on this unusual trip.

“Everybody has their reasons,” Jean Renoir famously stated in Rules of the Game. This film is a wonderful expression of that statement, proving that films need not be sensational and action-packed to be engrossing and suspenseful. Even the smallest gesture, like the young woman exchanging her own socks for the lost daughter’s socks, speaks volumes about character and irresistibly draws us in. Poetic and beautifully crafted, Ad-Lib Night is one of the very best of recent Korean films.

Ad-Lib Night can be purchased from Seoul Selection.

Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis -- "There Will Be Blood" -- Post-Screening Q&A, 12/11/07

Paul Thomas Anderson's masterful new film There Will Be Blood opens on December 26, and has already been topping numerous year-end critics' lists. Based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, the film is simultaneously epic and intimate, and a terrifying vision of the greed and violence that are the primal underpinnings of American history. Besides the prodigious command of sound and image present in nearly every frame -- from the bravura opening sequence that is as great an example of pure cinema as I've seen in recent memory, to the final astonishing sequence that fulfills the promise of the film's title -- the film makes frequent and canny use of perhaps its greatest asset, the volcanic performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, brilliantly essaying a role that most nearly recalls his only slightly more evil character in Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

Much like Walt Whitman's famous description of himself in "Song of Myself," There Will Be Blood is indeed large, and contains multitudes. I saw the film two weeks ago, and am still struggling to wrap my head around it. So until I can put together a proper review, I've posted below some video highlights of Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis discussing the film. Appearing with them are moderator David Schwartz of the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosted the screening, and actor Kevin O'Connor.

In this clip, Anderson discusses the influence of John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre on his film, and Day-Lewis explains how clothing can reveal character:

In this next clip, Day-Lewis discusses the relationship between his character Daniel Plainview and his adopted son:

In this last clip, Anderson and Day-Lewis talk about their working relationship while making the film:

Notes on Hong Sang-soo's "Woman on the Beach"

Woman on the Beach (Haebyonui yoin). 2006. Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo. Produced by Oh Jung-wan. Cinematography by Kim Hyung-ku. Edited by Ham Sung-won. Music by Jeong Yong-jin. Sound by Lee Seung-chul.

Cast: Kim Seung-woo (Kim Joong-rae), Ko Hyun-joung (Kim Moon-sook), Song Sun-mi (Choi Sun-hee), Kim Tae-woo (Won Chang-wook), Choi Ban-ya (Sun-hee’s friend), Lee Ki-woo (Beach resort caretaker), Oh Tae-kyung (Waiter at sushi restaurant).

One of the very best films of 2006, Hong Sang-soo's sublime Woman on the Beach will finally receive a U.S. release on January 9, when it begins a two-week run at Film Forum. Below are notes I wrote for my presentation of this film at Korean Cultural Service.

Successful film director Joong-rae is struggling to come up with a scenario for his latest film. Feeling blocked and needing a quiet place to write, he travels from Seoul to Shinduri Beach, a resort on Korea’s west coast. He asks his art director Chang-wook to keep him company. Chang-wook brings along his girlfriend Moon-sook, a music composer who is a fan of Joong-rae’s films. The three spend most of the day wandering around the nearly deserted beach talking, eating, and drinking. As the day unfolds and everyone becomes increasingly inebriated, they reveal significant facets of their personalities and personal histories. As Moon-sook observes, Joong-rae turns out to be very different from his philosophical art films. He is a cynical, abrasive man with a barely concealed rage that erupts with little warning. Nevertheless, Moon-sook and Joong-rae experience a mutual attraction that they act upon when they sneak away from Chang-wook to spend the night together. The next day, however, Joong-rae coldly rebuffs Moon-sook and returns to Seoul. Two days later, a regretful Joong-rae returns to Shinduri hoping to reconnect with Moon-sook. He then meets Sun-hee, a café manager. On the pretext of interviewing Sun-hee for his film, he begins a fling with this new woman whom he is convinced resembles Moon-sook. Complications ensue when Moon-sook herself returns to the beach that night.

Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang-soo’s seventh feature, is his funniest and most accessible film to date. Just as in his other films, male selfishness, egotism and cruelty are put mercilessly on display. However, in this new film Hong gives his material a much lighter touch than usual, with a playful approach to cinematic form. Hong is unique among Korean filmmakers for eschewing flashy visuals and outré subject matter in order to foreground his witty dialogue and the naturalistic performances of his actors. Hong’s deceptively simple style makes use of recurring narrative patterns, which richly rewards multiple viewings. His perceptive and brutally honest depictions of male and female relationships have drawn comparisons to Eric Rohmer. Woman on the Beach features excellent performances, most notably Ko Hyun-joung, a popular TV drama actress making her film debut. Her portrayal of Moon-sook, a woman who remains optimistic despite being emotionally bruised by the men in her life, is a revelation.

Hong Sang-soo was born in 1960 in Seoul. After studying film at Chungang University in Korea, he continued his education in the U.S., earning an MFA degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. Hong also studied for a time at the Cinemathèque Française in Paris. Upon his return to Korea he worked at the SBS television network. In 1996 Hong released his debut film The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, which received much critical acclaim and immediately established him as a major talent. Hong’s films have won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and have been critically lauded at the Cannes, Berlin, and New York film festivals. His other films are The Power of Kangwon Province (1998), Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000), Turning Gate (2002), Woman is the Future of Man (2004), and Tale of Cinema (2005).

Korean Cinema Classics: Kwak Ji-kyun's "Portrait of Youth"

Portrait of Youth (Jeolmeun nalui chosang). 1991. Directed by Kwak Ji-kyun. Written by Jang Hyeon-su, based on the novel by Lee Mun-yeol. Produced by Lee Tae-won. Cinematography by Jung Il-sung. Edited by Kim Hyeon. Music by Kim Young-dong. Art direction by Cho Young-sam. Sound by Kim Kyeong-il and Yang Dae-ho.

Cast: Jeong Bo-seok (Young-hoon), Lee Hye-sook (Jung-nim), Bae Jong-ok (Miss Yoon), Ok So-ri (Hae-yeon).

This film is about one man’s long journey, often across snowy roads and sometimes near death, to enlightenment and self-awareness. However, the English title Portrait of Youth points to what this film truly is, which is a larger portrait of a turbulent period and the responses of young people towards it. Young-hoon (Jong Bo-seok), the protagonist, at the film’s outset has returned to his family home, and to his brother, who is disappointed with him for dropping out of high school. He gives Young-hoon his share of their deceased mother’s inheritance, and sends him on his way, as Young-hoon promises to pass his college entrance examination. “You are the hope of our family,” his brother tells him. No pressure there. Young-hoon goes through the grueling process of working menial jobs to put himself through school. He chooses to major in Korean literature, and aspires to be a poet. However, his lofty ideals run afoul with the tenor of life on campus, which is roiled with conflict, due to the massive student protests going on at the time. In one scene, he is taken to task by the leader of the student movement for writing an article in the school newspaper criticizing activists for denigrating literature in favor of rigidly doctrinaire ideology. His girlfriend Hae-yeon (Ok So-ri) is a French literature major, and their relationship is going well at first, but Young-hoon’s internal confusion soon wrecks things, as he begins to see everything in terms of class conflict as much as the student activists do, criticizing Hae-yeon and her friends for failing to be more conscious of the plight of the lower classes.

Young-hoon’s confusion and despair grows as he witnesses the deaths of two of his friends as a direct result of the protests, and the authorities’ predictably repressive response to them. The campus is shut down, and Yong-hoon takes to the road, carrying a bottle of poison in his pocket. All throughout the film, Yong-hoon is haunted by the memories of his unrequited first love Jung-nim (Lee Hye-sook), dreaming of her often. Yong-hoon arrives at a village, where he works in a brothel, and is drawn to one of the prostitutes, Miss Yoon (Bae Jong-ok). He also meets a mysterious knife-sharpener. Both of them have tragic and complicated pasts, which are revealed as circumstances compel all three to become traveling companions on the harsh, snowy roads.

The film is beautifully shot, with careful attention paid to natural surroundings – lush cherry blossom groves, snowy mountains, rocky and rugged terrain – and how they mirror the psychological states of the many characters we are introduced to in this film, which is essentially a road movie, a very common narrative mode in Korean cinema. The clear and powerful message this movie sends is that life is always worth living, despite tragedy, despite “chaos and confusion,” as Young-hoon describes events in his running voiceover. The core of the human spirit is to carry on in spite of everything, and, as Young-hoon learns, it is not necessary to have all of life’s answers to survive.

Portrait of Youth can be purchased from YesAsia.com.

Korean Cinema Classics: Kim Hong-joon's "La Vie en Rose"

La Vie en Rose (Jangmi bit insaeng). 1994. Directed by Kim Hong-joon. Written by Yook Sang-ho. Produced by Lee Tae-won. Cinematography by Park Seung-bae. Edited by Park Soon-duk. Music by Jo Dong-ik. Art direction by Kim Yu-jun. Costume design by Kim Yun-suk. Sound by Kim Kyeong-il and Yang Dae-ho. Martial arts direction by Kim Yeong-mo.

Cast: Choi Myung-gil (Madam), Choi Jae-sung (Dong-pal), Cha Kwang-su (Kee-young/Jee-ho), Lee Ji-hyung (Yu-jin), Hwang Mi-sun (Miss Oh).

Not to be confused with the recent Edith Piaf biopic of the same name, this particular film with the French title La Vie en Rose is a Korean film set in 1987, when the country was gearing up for next year’s Seoul Olympics, and the repressive regime of Chun Doo Hwan had to at least make a show of respecting democratic rights. And as this film powerfully argues, it was indeed very much a show, as student protestors continued to be tear-gassed, and anti-government activists were still forced to lay low and hide out from the authorities. On the evidence of this film, one apparently common place to hide out was the sort of comic book rental shop run in this film by the Madam (Choi Myung-gil), where the almost exclusively male clientele stay overnight, paying an extra fee for the privilege (and for the Madam to risk being shut down by the police), and enjoying after-hours porn flicks. The Madam is dissatisfied with the life she leads, and feels trapped in this existence, but can see no alternative. A friend helpfully sets her up with a businessman for a marriage meeting, to no avail.

Soon, however, three men come into her life, and turn her life and her business (in one scene late in the film, literally) upside down. One of them is her half-brother Jee-ho (Cha Kwang-su), a labor activist wanted by the government and hiding out under an assumed name. The second is Dong-pal (Choi Jae-sung), a gangster wanted by both the police and a rival gang who believes he killed their boss. He beats up other patrons in the shop, and rapes the Madam one day when they are alone in the shop. However, the Madam is so beaten down by her life that she passively accepts this rape, feeling as powerless in stopping it as in leaving the town to live a better life. The third man is Yu-jin (Lee Ji-hyung), a shy, sensitive poet who is also a fugitive from government authorities, having written a satirical anti-government novel, that while being very popular with the public, raised considerable ire in official circles. Yu-jin pines for Miss Oh (Hwang Mi-sun), a pretty coffee-shop delivery girl, whom he comes to learn is not all she seems.

La Vie en Rose was the debut film of Kim Hong-joon, who went on to be a celebrated professor and film scholar, as well as a member of the Korean Film Commission, and the founder of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan). Kim has made only two subsequent features to date: the rock-music film Jungle Story (1996) and the documentary My Korean Cinema (2003). Kim’s film is an absorbing work that gives us a vivid picture of life during this period of Korean history. The news reports Jee-ho obsessively watches (as the other patrons ignore them, or call for changing the channel), form a background running commentary courtesy of the government propaganda that contrasts sharply with life on the ground. Comic-book culture is very wittily referenced in this film, for example with the scenes of Dong-pal fighting his gangster foes, which could easily have been scenes from the popular martial arts comics the Madam rents out. In a nice little scene, the Madam is taking inventory of her comics, and stops to read one of them, a smile playing across her face, as it obviously has been some time since she has actually sat down to enjoy reading the comics that surround her all day.

At the film’s conclusion, the Madam is resigned to her fate of never leaving her little shop in Seoul, and the run-down neighborhood that surrounds it. However, she takes some comfort in her solidarity with the downtrodden people she serves, offering them shelter and a brief respite from the harsh world outside. The Madam wanted so much to leave this place, with “the shabby houses, and those who barely live.” But, she says, “Now I’ve realized that I’m one of them.” She can help people forget their worries, ply them with food and liquor, and titillate them with erotic comics and porno flicks. She can assure herself that politically and morally, she is ultimately on the right side. And after the despair and tragedy that we have seen over the course of this film, Kim leaves us with a glimmer of hope in the film’s very last shot, an optimistic note that points toward the time that the film was made, under a truly democratic government, the country beginning to recover from a turbulent time that wasn’t so far in the past.

La Vie en Rose can be purchased from YesAsia.com.

Review: Toshio Masuda's "Like a Shooting Star"

Like a Shooting Star (Kurenai no nagareboshi). 1967. Directed by Toshio Masuda. Written by Kaneo Ikegami and Toshio Masuda. Cinematography by Kurataro Takamura. Music by Hajime Kaburagi. Art direction by Takeo Kimura.

Cast: Tetsuya Watari, Ruriko Asaoka, Kayo Matsuo, Tatsuya Fuji, Ryotaro Sugi, Jo Shishido.

Japan Society’s film series “No Borders, No Limits: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema” continues with a rare screening of Toshio Masuda’s 1967 film Like a Shooting Star, tonight at 7:30. The title of this film aptly describes its main character, Goro (Tetsuya Watari), a cooler-than-thou gangster, who burns brightly and is gone just as fast. “If I don’t kill you, someone else will,” Goro is told at one point. At the film’s outset, he is sent to maim a rival gang boss and ends up killing the man. He is hidden away by his yakuza family in the port city of Kobe, and told he will be sent for in six months, which stretches to a year. He is bored with the slow pace of Kobe, and listlessly hangs around, occasionally beating up unruly drunken U.S. soldiers on leave from Vietnam at the bar he runs. Goro passively endures a casual romance with his girlfriend Yukari, who constantly begs him to tell her he loves her. He mouths the words, but with little feeling.

Soon enough, however, he gets the excitement he craves. Unbeknownst to Goro, someone is shadowing him. Also, a jewelry trader, Kojima, arrives in town, and soon after disappears. Meanwhile, Usu, a Tokyo detective who has been on Goro’s tail for a long time, waiting for him to slip up so he can throw handcuffs on him, pops up every now and again to taunt him. After Kojima’s disappearance, his fiancé Keiko (Ruriko Asaoka) shows up, and Goro is instantly smitten. He takes her around, knowing full well Kojima has been killed, but pretending to ask around to learn his whereabouts. He bluntly voices to Keiko his desire to sleep with her, and Keiko resists. Nevertheless, they are drawn to each other, and Goro begins to reveal a deeper side that he has heretofore resolutely kept hidden, beneath the veneer of the whistling, icy, detached yakuza. However, he fails to see that his destined end is about to reach him.

Like a Shooting Star is very much a rewrite of Godard’s Breathless, even down to the betrayal at the film’s conclusion. It was a remake of director Toshio Masuda’s 1958 film Red Quay, which itself was inspired by another classic French gangster film, Pépé le Moko. In this film, Keiko extols the virtues of Paris to Goro, who strenuously refutes her romantic notions. Masuda relies less on action scenes than the snappy repartee of its leads, as both the haughty rich girl and the self-consciously cool gangster trade barbs that at first disguise the passion they begin to feel for each other. The film boasts highly stylized cinematography by Kuratoro Takamura, and the production design is just as striking, courtesy of Takeo Kimura, who also designed the distinctive sets of Seijun Suzuki’s films. Lead actor Watari also starred in one of Suzuki’s most famous films, Tokyo Drifter (1966). Like a Shooting Star also features a notable appearance by Jo Shishido, one of Nikkatsu’s biggest stars, as the hitman pursuing Goro.