A Film a Week - 3670

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

At least theoretically, we understand what it means to be a member of an underprivileged minority and some of us even had practical experiences in that department. Being a “double minority”, a member of minority on two aspects, is a bit more extreme setting most of us know nothing about. The thing is that there is not a mathematics formula to be used in counting and measuring loneliness, isolation, lack of privilege or emotional pain.

In his feature debut, “3670”, the Korean filmmaker Park Joon-ho tries to envision one such situation. The film has been on the tour of festivals since its premiere this spring, and we caught it at San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Cheol-jun (Cho You-hyun) is a North Korean deflector living in Seoul in and around the community of his compatriots. They all attend the same college preparation classes and the same church services, so one might assume that their community is a close-knit one, or that the rest of the South Korean society is hesitant to accept them. However, Cheol-jun fears discrimination within the and expulsion from the group, so he hides one crucial thing about himself from his buddies: the fact that he is gay.

Since the hook-ups via the phone app do not give the desired results for him (Cheol-jun wants a relationship, while the rest of the users, like the one seen in the opening scene, are there just for some casual sex), he finally summons some courage to attend the meeting / blind dating event with some guys from the South. However, once they learn that he is a deflector, they lose the last interest they had in him.

The exception to the rule of rejection comes at his part-time job at a store where he encounters Yeong-jun (Kim Hyeon-mok) who also attended the meeting and lives in the area. He becomes Cheol-jun’s friend, romantic interest and the guide to the seemingly vibrant Seoul gay scene where both young man seem to feel liberated. However, Yeong-jun also has some secrets that he keeps…

The title “3670” is actually a code the young gay men in the film use in their texting communication, and the fact they have to communicate in codes reveals a sad truth about the daily life of a gay person in Seoul. There is a certain code of conduct: whatever happens behind the closed doors stays there, and there is no way that it comes out to the public limelight. But is not it the case with the most of the countries and their societies in our world?

It seems that, like his protagonist, Park Joon-ho has to deal with two sets of problems in the South Korean society, with a difference that the character has to find his place under the sun, and the filmmaker has to expose them to the audience. In Park’s case, it seems that he bit more than he could chew. Although the slow exposition of the characters’ backgrounds and a number of lower-intensity subplots they spawn might seem like a detailed road map for the actors to create a compelling characters, it burdens the core story with excessive minutes of runtime.

Park has some directorial tricks up in his sleeves, like the use of the hand-held cinematography by Han Sang-kil that gets calmer as the protagonist catches the ropes of his life. Unfortunately, the filmmaker is also his own editor, which takes a toll in the terms of pacing. The actors do more than a decent job to make “3670” a watchable experience. The leading duo shares some on-screen chemistry, while the rest of the cast, including Jo Dae-hee as the most popular guy in the club, get enough screen time to create solid episodes. However, Cho You-hyun is the star of the movie, channelling the shyness and almost virginal naivety of his character.

Noble intentions and the necessity to address the country’s structural injustices aside, “3670” is sometimes too big, too clumsy and too “engineered” for its own good. Simply put, the execution does not match the ambition, which is a dead giveaway for Park’s lack of experience. A more streamlined version could have worked better, both with the festivals’ committees and with the regular audiences.

A Film a Week - The Fin

 previously published on Cineuropa

When it comes to imagining the horrors of the future, our imagination often proves to be limitless. However, the real terror does not stem from the inventions we have fabricated, but rather from their connection to the situations and occurrences we observe in the real world and in our immediate environment. That also goes for Syeyoung Park’s newest dystopian horror feature, The Fin, which has premiered in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present competition.

After environmental collapse, the Korean peninsula is unified as one state that sports all the hi-tech advancements of the South along with all the propaganda apparatus of the North, but the devastation has created a new division. While most folks live almost normally, albeit under some restrictions (for instance, being dirty is seen as an act of patriotism, since it saves water), the mutated Omega people are being held in captivity beyond the boundary of the Great Korean Wall and are being used as slave labour to clean up pollution. The state propaganda marks them out as enemies, and invites others to join the civil service that combats and catches the runaway Omegas.

One of them (Goh-woo) goes missing from one of the colonies. It turns out that he is on a mission to find Mia (Yeon Ye-ji), also an Omega, but who lives in hiding and works at an eerie fishing shop that actually sells the nostalgia of the “Old World ways” to its customers. At the same time, Su-jin (Kim Pur-eum), a new agent in the Korean Freedom Youth Civil Service, sets out on a mission to capture the Omegas in hiding, including Mia, but as she gets more involved with her work, she starts questioning the official propaganda.

It’s not hard to spot details from our own world in this bleak vision of the future, from national and class divisions to the toxicity of propaganda and the obsession with our own safety, ever in jeopardy because of others. But connecting The Fin to specific things like the division of Korea, the refugee crisis, the exploitation of foreign migrant workers and both of Donald Trump’s terms in office would be superficial. That’s because Park creates a universe of his own, and does so from scratch and in depth, presenting it carefully and with a great sense of restraint while developing the characters and the plot in his script.

However, the greatest thing about The Fin is its execution, which is partly the product of budgetary limitations and partly the filmmaker’s usual modus operandi, as we saw in his previous feature The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra (2022). There are some cinema-vérité ingredients, as Park, his cast and his crew sometimes filmed in uncontrollable conditions. Although the colours of the sky, the land and the water are quite unnatural, as per the script requirements, in Park’s own cinematography, the imagery seems almost palpable owing to the visuals resembling those of 16 mm works, complete with the inherent graininess. While the years-long editing process steered by Park, Han Ji-yoon and Clémentine Decremps also demanded some re-shoots, it was always less about the plotting, and more about the atmosphere and vibe. In that regard, one should commend the actors for their dedicated work, especially in the micro-acting department once Park opts for close-ups, as well as main composer Haam Seok-young, whose piano-driven score induces the right amount of melancholy. In this way, The Fin becomes a stellar example of an elevated genre piece that could prove to be a genuine discovery on this year’s festival circuit.

A Film a Week - Revelations / Gyesirok

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Yeon Sang-ho first established himself as, potentially, the next big thing in animation with his debut- and sophomore features “The Fake” (2013) and “Seoul Station” (2016). With the latter’s live-action sequel, “Train to Busan” (2016), he nominated himself for the title of the new Korean master of genre filmmaking. However, the trilogy’s ending, “Peninsula” (2020) was underwhelming, to put it mildly, even for the COVID-era standards, while two more two more of his flicks, the superhero action comedy “Psychokinesis” (2018) and the Netflix-produced SF-action movie “Jung-E” (2023) were mere passable efforts.

The energetic filmmaker then turned to work on a couple of TV series, but now he is back to the big screens, conditionally, with “Revelations”, an adaptation of his own web comic. Conditionally because “Revelations” is a Netflix piece with no theatre- or festival screening intended, despite the backing from the powerhouse genre auteur Alfonso Cuarron who assumed the role of the executive producer here. Also, this is a step away from Yeon’s general habitat of genre spectacles and towards the psychological realism within the framework of a grim thriller revolving around a child molester / serial killer and a pastor and a police detective who try to catch him.

First we meet the pastor Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol, glimpsed in Hun Jang’s “A Taxi Driver”), a devout man of faith who has to face a double trouble in his earthly life. He has to deal with his wife’s infidelity, and also with a threat of a mega-church being built in his area of work by his former mentor’s son. When his encounter with a recently released sex offender Kwon (Shin Min-jae, re-uniting with Yeon after “Jung-E”) coincides with his son going missing for a while, he sets on catching and punishing him. Even when the son reappears, Min-chan is sure that Kwon is guilty of something and has religious visions as a “proof”.

On the other hand, Kwon is also pursued by the police detective Yeon-hee (Shin Hyeon-bin, lately mostly active on television) who also has a score to settle with him. Namely, he abducted and murdered her sister in the past, so the detective wants to bring him to justice. It might go against the idea that a police officer must not be personally involved with the case in order to close it efficiently and justly, but here it is taken as a “booster” for Yeon-hee’s motivation, which is further enhanced with wobbly flashbacks and visions of her sister.

If “Revelations” were more toned-down, psychologically dense drama about the characters’ motivations and convictions, it would probably be a better movie of a character study sort. The actors’ efforts go into that direction and Ryu Jun-yeol is the particularly good and convincing here. The actor’s ability to switch his presence from well-meaning to menacing perfectly matches the traits of the character he plays.

However, Yeon aims for a classical thriller here, so he puts an accent on the “race against time” trope. Unfortunately, it never gets a firm grip on the viewers and the reasons for that are several. Firstly, he does not vary his visual style enough, so Yeon-hee’s flashbacks are the only step away from the quasi-matter-of-factly realism that dominates the film’s atmosphere. Not even Min-chan’s visions get a special treatment. Secondly, it is obvious that the film was constructed for small screens, so the absence of the “movie magic” is felt, sometimes painfully. And finally, the only flourish present throughout the movie is the choral score by Kim Dong-wook and Alan Tyler that quickly becomes repetitive and tiresome in promising something Yeon does not want or does not how to deliver: an examination of the characters’ convictions, religious or otherwise.

Therefore, “Revelations” becomes and stays a generic “Netflix-and-chill” experience: watchable, but forgetable. It is so low-engaging that it will depart the viewers’ thoughts and memory way quicker than it entered them.

A Film a Week - Love in the Big City / Daedosiui salangbeob

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

People navigating love life and life in general is hardly a new subject in cinema and other art forms. Even the setting in which a straight woman lives with a gay man in the same apartment is not that new. However, Park Sang-young’s novel “Love in the Big City” is not merely a Korean riff on, let’s say, Will and Grace TV series. On the contrary, it aims for something more earnest, realistic and aware of the wider societal context.

The best-selling novel is actually getting two releases this fall. While the TV series adaptation will hit the small screens later this month, the big screen one, penned by Kim Na-deul (“Perheps Love”, 2021) and helmed by E.oni, formerly known as Lee Eon-hee (of 2016 “Missing” fame), has already premiered at Toronto and screened at Hawaii International Film Festival.

E.oni opens her film with a man running up the stairs to reach the rooftop terrace where a woman in wedding gown leans on a fence and smokes a cigarette. Loud music on piano and choir vocalising and a drone shot of downtown Seoul send the rest of the action into a series of flashbacks marked by numbers suggesting our protagonists’ age, starting when the two of them meet as a part of the same large French language-majoring group at college under the mentorship of the professor Olivier (Salim Benoit).

Jae-hee (Kim Go-eun) is a free-spirited, some would say “wild” girl. Although an over-achiever by nature, she is concentrated more on having fun than on studying. After all, she lived in Paris and is quite fluent in French. Contrary to her, Heung-soo (Steve Noh, also known as Noh Shang-hyun) is an aimless and timid guy who chose to delay his military service by studying French, drawn to the language because of Albert Camus’ “Stanger”. He seems to be the only guy in the group who is not in love with Jae-hee, and there is a good reason for it: he is gay, but he hides it even from his mother.

After an incident draws them closer, they become close friends and he moves to her apartment. They confide in each other and navigate their love lives together, while raising suspicions that they are a couple. Although their adventures might seem goofy and funny at times, they can also take a darker turn. After all, Korean society is still conservative, patriarchal and with strict hierarchy, while the acceptance of either LGBTQ+ people or male-female friendships as such is not implied.

Although the story has the clear beginning and ending, the seemingly integral choice of things in-between taken from the source novel can prove to be a bit troublesome, especially for fitting into a single movie. Although it is quite generous in the terms of runtime, the material simply seems a better fit for a one-season TV show. E.oni’s opting for a few clubbing montage sequences early on, kinetic camerawork (executed by the DoP Kim Hyoung-ju) and quick cutting saves some of the runtime, but seems a bit counter-intuitive for a romance drama. Later on, when the comedic elements evaporate, the style also gets calmer, and more fitting for the serious topics the novel, the script and the film try to explore.

The two leading actors remain on the centre stage of the film for the whole time, playing their characters evolving the best they can. Still, they are better at nailing the basics of them laid out early on than at getting to the characters’ emotional depth and complexity as the film moves to the more serious territory. Kim Go-eun, of “A Muse” (2012) fame and recently seen in “Exhuma” (2024), enjoys walking on the wild side and defying the strict and patriarchal society as Jae-hee, while Steve Noh, one of the stars of 2015 “Seoul Searching”, plays Heung-soo with tact and just the needed amount of swagger.

In the end, “Love in the Big City” is a film that opens certain aspects of contemporary life in Seoul and Korea in general from the point of view of young(er) people. It might not prove to be a seminal piece of work, but it is still decent.

A Film a Week - Seoul Vibe / Seouldaejakjeon

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

“Seoul Vibe”, the newest film directed by Moon Hyun-sung (whose previous works include 2012 period sports drama “As One” and 2017 even more period crime-mystery “The King’s Case Note”), certainly promises a lot of fun. It is a period piece set in the politically interesting times in recent history, and an action comedy with a lot of car chases. Regarding those things, it is a bit of pity that it came to us via Netflix, meaning only on the small screens, since a movie theatre feels like a natural setting for watching such a flick.

We meet our protagonists, Dong-wook (Yoo Ah-in, the star of Lee Chang-dong’s masterpiece “Burning”) and Joon-gi (Ong Seong-wu) at the end of their mission in Saudi Arabia where they were tasked by their Korean boss with transporting guns and ammo across the desert in the back of a pick-up truck. After the job accomplished and paid, they return back to Seoul with a dream of taking a part in the famous Daytona race in the United States. Back in Seoul, the landscape they used to know does not exist anymore: it’s 1988, the military dictatorship is overthrown and the Summer Olympics are about to get underway. Unfortunately for them, it also means that their neighbourhood has been demolished in the process of the preparations for the biggest sporting event in the country and in the world. Luckily, their garage hideout is intact, so the dream can go on.

However, the ambitious prosecutor Ahn (Oh Jung-se, glimpsed in “The Call” and “Swing Kids”) has plans of his own for the extended crew that also includes the aspiring DJ Woo-sam (Go Kyung-pyo, “Decision to Leave”), the cabbie Bok-nam (Lee Kyoo-hyung) and Don-wook’s motorbike-riding kid sister Yoon-hee (Park Ju-hyun) and knows enough about their illegal activities to lock them up or to get their US visas denied. So he enlists them to infiltrate into a loan-sharking criminal clan lead by Director Lee (Kim Seong-gyoon, recently glimpsed in “Sinkhole”), but the goal of their investigation is the dictatorship’s slash fund, while the general’s wife Kang In-sook (Moon So-ri of “The Handmaiden” fame) is the missing link (and the film’s main villain) herself. But first, the crew has to pass the driving test…

To say that “Seoul Vibe” is a loud film would be an understatement. It actually screams on the most of the fields: the action is breath-taking, the twists are sharp, the comedy is broad, the visual design is striking, so are the visual effects and practical stunts, and, on top of that, the whole thing is dipped in funk and hip-hop soundtrack by Nene Kang and DJ Soulscape. Actually, it could serve as the Korean mainstream cinema answer to the contemporary Hollywood car-chase action franchises like “Fast and Furious” and “Need for Speed”, with an addition of retro-styling, retro-cars and 80s pastel colour scheme.

However, the trouble is that it contains too much of everything. The presence of too many characters hampers their development and sentences the actors to broad-stroke acting, resulting in only the villainess Kang being the memorable one. Too many twists and turns result in convoluted plot and, combined with overly elaborate action sequences, in the runtime of 140 minutes that certainly takes its toll. Although Moon’s directing is pretty sure-handed and the craft components are solid throughout, there is only that much that could be done with Shin Sua’s script, and it is especially obvious without the packed movie theatre magic.

There were two ways out of it. One could be streamlining of the plot in order for the runtime to be kept under or around two-hour-mark. The second is a further development of the material for another format, namely the mini-series that would actually suit the distribution channel. Still, “Seoul Vibe” is far from a bad effort, but it is also far from a perfect one.

A Film a Week - Pipeline / Paipeulain

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

What happened to Yoo Ha? Once he was a reliable and fruitful filmmaker present across the genre spectre, from the contemporary romance “Marriage Is a Crazy Thing” (2002) to a period gangster epic “Gangnam Blues” (2015). In that vein, his newest movie “Pipeline” shows some of its helmer’s mastery, but it will certainly end up in the bottom half of his filmography, mostly due to the very limited budget.

Drill-Bit (Seo In-guk, very active on TV) is a drilling expert whose skills and tools come handy in the shady operations of stealing oil directly from the pipelines. For his newest mission, he is hired by an investor Geon-woo (Lee Soo-hyuk of “Runway Cop” fame, sort of) with a daring plan to steal the large amounts of oil from two master pipelines that almost intersect at one place. His new crew consists of the welder nicknamed The Welder (Eum Moon-suk), the digger nicknamed Big Shovel (Tae Hang-ho), Chief Na (character actor Yoo Seong-muk who was glimpsed in the films like Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” and “The Host”, as well as Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave”) who is an architect who knows the layouts of the underground pipelines and the woman nicknamed Counter (Bae Da-bin) whose task is to oversee the operation from the counter of the hotel which under the false reconstruction and to divert nosy cops and those who pass by.

Time frame is tight and there is a bit of mistrust within the crew in the beginning of the operation. But, as it often goes with heist movies of this sort, nothing is as it seems at first glance. Would Drill-Bit’s competence, professional and personal ethics be enough for him to stay afloat in the game of double-crossing?

Yoo opens the film in a slapstick-y manner that poses as action, riddled with clichés, over-acting and cheap visual effects. Fortunately, the director gets the grip soon enough, as the crew is brought together and the heist thriller mechanics sets in. Working from the script he co-wrote with Kim Kyung-chan, he does his best to divert the viewer’s attention in order to serve them with surprises and plot twists. Even when the film comes to its action-laced final act, its slapstick feels more organic.

Thanks to the editor Park Gok-ji, the pacing is solid and the changes in rhythm with short bursts of action come in handy. Also, the cinematographer Ha Gyeong-ho shows certain skills in creating a unique “geography” of multiple locations, which especially goes for the tunnels and underground structures the characters have to inhabit on their mission.

On top of cheap CGI, the budgetary limitations can be also observed in the way how the cast members handle their more or less typical tasks. Yoo Seong-muk is reliable as always, but his screen time is limited. Luckily, Seo In-guk shows some leading man charisma and Bae Da-bin is pretty convincing as a woman with multiple roles in the crew, some of which are a bit secretive. However, Eum Moon-suk as The Welder and Lee Soo-hyuk as the investor are prone to over-acting and hamming their performances.

Yoo Ha evidently has to work with what he is given in pretty much every aspect. He does his best to handle it and to keep it tight, but his success is quite variable. In the end, “Pipeline” is a watchable heist flick with an interesting premise. However, the way it was handled is not particularly innovative.

A Film a Week - Twenty Hacker

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

From a film titled “Twenty Hacker”, one might expect that we are going to get some hacking action in the world of financial, corporate cyber-crime. But with Han Hyun-seok’s debut effort, we are simply not that lucky.

Working from the script written by Ahn Jeon-joo, Han actually opens the film with an action-type of scene. Our protagonist Jae-min (Kwon Hyun-bin) is in a darkened corporate building, working some “magic” with computers there while constantly being on the phone with the rest of the crew. His time is running out, and on his way back, he is interrupted by the security guards. That intro sends the first half (or even more) of the film to the realm of flashback…

We learn that Jae-min is a computer science student whose father was a victim of a hacking fraud, so he strives for revenge. When he is not studying or spending time with his only friend and love interest Jo-hee (Lim Na-young) who is, unfortunately, in love with the university’s alpha-dude and sportsman Chan-ho (Lee Su-woong), Jae-min hacks into the systems of fraudulent companies and alarms the police of their illegal actions anonymously. His actions draw the attention of a group called Better World, of which the two of his former school “frenemies” Man-gook and Hye-so are already members. Could they work as a team in order for Jae-min to execute the revenge on the rival group?

The story and the idea behind it are simple enough, but the whole thing is crippled by both clumsy plotting and equally unapt genre-mixing with romantic comedy. In that the whole cyber-crime and hacking angle gets lost and feels sacrificed for the unfunny, poorly-timed and ultimately slapstick-y jokes. The sense of meandering is even enhanced with tone-deaf directing that, in theory, probably serves as Han’s showcase of solutions that are, unfortunately, largely wrong.

That notion gets quite obvious with the technical components, especially the editing that uses all the tricks and tips applicable to television, such as zooms and horizontal camera rotations as editing tools, montage sequences and abrupt cutting. They all make the already artificially convoluted plot even harder to follow. The overbearing use of soundtrack that shifts in music styles and sometimes even relies on the many-times-heard loops and jingles is also a dead give-away that the creative time has no idea what they are doing.

The same TV-qualities could be applied for acting that is never above the level of K-drama series. In the defence of the actors playing the roles of the main couple, they are pretty much amateurs, coming from the ranks of music with only previous experiences in the drama series. The rest of the cast pretty much goes along the given lines.

All in all, “Twenty Hacker” does not seem like a movie at all, but more as an extended pilot for a run-of-the-mill TV series. The sooner we realize it, this bitter pill gets easier to swallow, but it still does not mean that the show made out of it would be particularly worth watching.

A Film a Week - The Vanished / Vanishing

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Denis Dercourt is by no means an A-lister in the realm of French cinema, but he nevertheless made some career, both at home and abroad in Germany, especially with his 2006 Cannes title “The Page Turner”. With last year’s “The Vanished” (somewhere already released as “Vanishing”), Dercourt tried to bring his career on a new level by adapting the novel “The Killing House” of a renowned British crime fiction author Peter May in a French-Korean co-production and set in Seoul. After the premiere at last year’s Busan, some minor festival bookings and limited theatrical and online releases, it is now released globally on various digital platforms.

The topic is set in an opening sequence. A bulky man (Choi Moo-seong) goes to an underground surgical facility from which he picks up a heavy load in suitcases. The facility itself turns out to a mob-operated organ harvesting point, and the organs obtained there go through a complicated procedure of being masked as properly imported ones before being transplanted to the patients. However, the real plot starts with a discovery of a female dead body in a nearby stream. The body has been there for at least one month, so it cannot by identified by any of the conventional means, but the strange thing about it is the fact that the victim died while being under heavy, but still not lethal dose of anesthetic.

Luckily for the detective Park (Yoo Yeon-seok, glimpsed as young Woo-jin in the original “Oldboy”, who made a career on television after that), who handles the case, a forensic conference is in town and the French “star” of it, Alice Launey (Olga Kurylenko) is an expert on a new method of fingerprinting the heavily decomposed bodies, so he enlist her help. First they discover the identity of a dead woman (who turns out to be a legal Chinese immigrant working for the cleaning service), and then the bigger plot that involves more bodies and an organ trafficking scheme. While they try to solve the case(s), a romantic spark between them lights up…

The trouble with the otherwise thick plotting in the script Dercourt co-wrote with Marion Doussout starts with very rough characterization in which only the detective and the forensic expert have a hint of psychologically deeper personality, which still does not make their romance any more believable. The rest of the characters, with the noble exception of her assistant Mi-sook (Ye Ji-won), turn out to be the usual types, such as the mob contractor, the assassin (Kim Woo-hyung), the corrupt doctor (Lee Seung-jun) and the mobster, making the whole organ-trading scheme and therefore the investigation feel quite generic.

However, Dercourt is slightly better as a director than he is as a writer, at least in the terms of composing the atmosphere with a dash of noir in a largely procedural plot, resulting in a modern, distinctively European thriller with some Korean flavour. In his defence, the plot of the original novel takes place in Shanghai, in a very different legal and political system, so some things might have got lost in translation.

Acting-wise, the accent is put on the only proper star of the film, Kurylenko, who not only speaks a tad too perfect French, but manages to play an indefinitely troubled character in a very convincing manner, while the rest of the cast pretty much follows her leads. As Park, Yoo Yeon-seok adds a bit of a goofy charm, but the lack of a real chemistry could be seen in more emotionally demanding scenes. The same could be said regarding the mystery of Mi-sook’s character, which Ye Ji-won plays competently in her own terms, but it still cannot be a match for Kurylenko’s skills and zest.

The technical components of the film are probably the highlight of the film, especially when it comes to Axel Cosnefroy’s cinematography in very distinctive lighting that is dim and cold at the same time, and Jérôme Lemonnier’s eclectic music score that uses the neoclassical forms, electronic beats and noirish jazz in a counter-intuitive fashion. Valentin Féron’s editing also deserves praise for the quick pacing favoured over clarity and especially for the craftiness of the opening sequence that raises the hopes that “The Vanished” would be a better film than it eventually is.

All things considered, it is a decent, if unremarkable piece of work. Less than sum of its parts, more likely a median value of them, it is sufficient for an average viewing experience at home, which makes digital platforms a good choice for the primary channel of its distribution.

A Film a Week - Night in Paradise / Nak won eui bam

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Tradition is just an empty word in the world of gangsters, and the same could be said also for the world of film distribution. One might expect that a genre fare with an elite festival premiere (last year’s Venice, out of competition) should end up on the regular repertoire in movie theatres, regionally if not worldwide, but Park Hoon-jung’s Night in Paradise landed on Netflix instead earlier this year. We might blame it on the pandemic, but the fact is that the streaming services are expanding regardless of it.

As a screenwriter, Park is best known for his work with Kim Jee-won on the iconic serial killer flick I Saw the Devil (2010), but as a director, his most breakthrough work would be his second feature, New World (2013). The latter was a crime drama with a dash of action and gangster epic, so it is somewhat expected for the filmmaker to go back to the familiar territory after more or less successful excursions to other genres, like historical adventure (Daeho), spy flick (V.I.P.) and supernatural mystery action (The Witch: Part 1 – The Subversion whose sequel is already announced.

Our protagonist Park Tae-gu (Eom Tae-goo, glimpsed in I Saw the Devil and The Age of Shadows) is a mid-level gangster in the clan lead by the old and weary Mr Yang (Park Ho-san). His sister urges him to consider a change in career before it is too late, but Tae-gu thinks that there is still job that needs to be done. After his sister and the cute niece are killed in an assassination masked as a car accident, Tae-gu and his boss are quick to blame the rival clan lead by Chairman Doh (Son Byung-ho) and Mr Yang greenlights his employee’s idea to assassinate the rival boss.

In the aftermath of the assassination, Tae-gu has to run and hide on Jeju Island until Yang joins him and the two get away to Vladivostok. The hiding place is at the house the former gangster Kuto (Lee Gi-yeong) whose schtick is packing the arms he sells in smelly fish. Kuto’s niece Jae Yeon (the up-and-coming actress Jeon Yeo-bin) who is dying of a mystery disease also lives there and, after the initial mistrust, the two outcasts forge an unlikely alliance to survive, to die or to kill for each other. Meanwhile, in Seoul, Yang’s war does not go as planned, especially after Doh is succeeded by an even more ruthless Director Ma (Cha Seung-won), and the police captain Park (Lee Mun-shik) has to interfere and set up negotiations where some pawns have to be sacrificed.

There is a lot of stuff to be enjoyed in Night in Paradise, like the nihilistic attitude about the honour among the gangsters, occasionally clever plotting, masterful shot framing and action set pieces directing by Park Hoon-jung, laced with some unashamed melodrama and operatic tone. Park also proves to be a clever visual storyteller and a master user of metaphors, such as the rotating tray on the negotiations table that signals how luck quickly turns.

The trouble with the screenplay is, however, that some of the sharper turns and plot twists needed some deeper motivation and Park did not make an effort to develop it. For instance, the friendship/romance angle between Tae-gu and Jae Yeon feels completely unexplored, and her disease is used as a generic movie excuse to make her desperate enough to lean on another soon-to-be-dead “loser”. Probably the biggest flaw of the film would be its unnecessary long runtime of over two hours that is mostly felt at the beginning of the film while the plot still slaloms through the expected checkpoints.

On the other hand, there is a lot of craft involved in making Night in Paradise (which is, by the way, an awfully generic title) from all the parties involved. The characters from the gangster milieu are interesting and unique, with their own perfectly defendable angles, which helps the actors to make their portraits quite compelling. Played by Park Ho-san and Cha Seung-won, Yang and Ma could reach the status of the iconic movie gangsters. On the other hand, the leads Eom Tae-gu and Jeon Yeo-bin seemingly have less work to do and less things to show with their characters, but the calibration of the acting performances on their side is good enough for a viewer to buy them completely. Coolly lensed by the veteran cinematographer Kim Young-ho that subtly highlights the differences between the busy city and the “paradise” island under the building threat of touristic gentrification, Night in Paradise is also an eye-candy and a film worth seeing even at home.

A Film a Week - Beyond You / Geudae noemeoe

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

The indie movie scene in South Korea is alive and productive and Park Hong-min is a part of it. After some modest success with his previous works “A Fish” (2011) and “Alone” (2015), he is back with a metaphysical melodrama “Beyond You”. It premiered at last year’s edition of Busan and was selected for the competition of Osaka Asian Film Festival where we had the chance to see it.

The plot of the film runs on some standard tropes like broken family ties. The career-obsessed filmmaker Kyung-ho (Kim Kwan-hoo) meets a young woman named Ji-yeon (Yoon Hye-ri) in the park. She drops a bombshell on him: she is the daughter of his college ex-girlfriend In-sook and he might even be her father. He rejects the sheer possibility of that kind of prospect and the trouble is that In-sook (Oh Mine) suffers from a progressing Alzheimer’s. Intrigued, he follows Ji-yeon to meet In-sook and to try to solve the mystery.

The plot gets messier from there, as it starts moving in circles and creating time loops where all three characters are driven by the senses of loss and regret to some extent. Same scenes play out again to different outcomes and characters appear in one another’s vicinity seemingly for no reason. There are two additional layers of reality in the film, the first clearly being a metaphor using ants as Kyung-ho’s long-standing obsession and the face of his recent fear, while the second one is Kyung-ho’s work on a new script that depicts the situations and relations from his life. A philosophical dilemma rises and remains unanswered until the very end: whether Kyung-ho works on the script based on autobiographical elements or the whole film is an adaptation of Kyung-ho’s fictional script.

The plot seems convoluted to a point that it is not clear what Park and his co-screenwriter Cha Hye-jin are trying to communicate, which becomes extremely tiresome in the film’s runtime of nearly two hours. Luckily, Park, working as a production designer and editor along his screenwriting and directing work, has some interesting ideas. Firstly, he uses the locations of Seoul’s back alleys to perfection, reflecting the metaphorical maze the characters are in to the physical world. Secondly, his directing style, resembling Hong Sang-soo’s poetics of extended, dynamic takes with zooms and camera movements serving as the means of the internal montage, leaves him less extra work in the editing room and style-wise makes up for the lack of substance in the script. For that, the cinematographer Kim Byeong-jung should also be commended.

The lack of clarity of Park’s vision also reflects on the acting. It remains unclear if Kyung-ho is actually troubled by the fact that he forgot his first love or he is just a jerk that wants to make sure that he is not a Ji-yeon’s father, and if it is impossible, to use the situation as the source of artistic inspiration. Kim Kwan-hoo goes for the only solution he has on his disposal: acting in a constantly elevated emotional register, which does not work well at times. Oh Mine also has to play a one-note character, so her performance is, well, one-note. Yoon Hye-ri does the best of the trio, finding a balance between overdoing and under-doing, but her character is also more of a sketch. The attempt of coding emotions by the music in loops on piano, synth and acoustic guitar written by Kim Cheol-hwan also seems half-baked.

In the end, “Beyond You” does not live up to its ambitions, as it is unclear and uncommunicative. For the extreme enthusiasts only!

A Film a Week - Beasts Clawing at Straws / Jipuragirado japgo sipeun jimseungdeul

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Jean-Luc Godard reportedly said that for a film to be successful, its filmmaker needs just two things: a woman and a gun. Kim Yong-hoon’s filmmaking debut “Beasts Clawing at Straws” features a number of women, and although it is not that high on guns which are replaced with blades, it is still an enjoyable viewing experience. A bag full of money and a bunch of people desperate enough to do everything in order to get it certainly helps to achieve it.

“Beast Clawing at Straws” premiered earlier this year at IFFR, winning the Special Jury Award and further contributing to the present visibility and popularity of the Korean cinema on the festival circuit. Its expected festival tour and box office performance was impacted by the pandemic conditions, but we finally got the chance to see it at the online edition of Sarajevo Film Festival in its non-competitive Kinoscope programme.

The afore-mentioned Louis Vuitton bag is firstly found by Joong-man (Bae Seong-woo, terrific), a man clearly down on his luck who has to work at the reception desk in a modest hotel sauna. Although he seems like an honest fellow, the temptation of a windfall big enough to recover from a failed business and to move out of his demented mother’s (Yun Yuh-ying) house seems too big to resist, so he hides it in the warehouse. The loot used to belong to an in-debt customs officer Tae-young (Jung Woo-sung of “The Good the Bad the Weird” fame) who owes a lot of money to the loan shark called Mr Park (Jeong Man-sik). The money he borrowed from him disappeared along with his girlfriend Yeon-hee (played with gusto by Jeon Do-yeon, the star of “The Housemaid” and “Secret Sunshine”) who, as we learn further on, used it up to start her massage parlour / prostitution business. Other personae dramatis include the masseuse Mi-ran (Shin Hyun-bin), her abusive husband and her Chinese low-level gangster client Jin-tae (Jung Ga-ram) eager to help her get out from the relationship by killing her husband in a fake accident so she could pick the insurance money and start a new life. A lot of duplicity ensues, followed by a number of murders and some ironic twists, while the bag and the money in it switch hands in the setting of a coastal city of Pyeongtaek.

“Beasts Clawing at Straws” is divided in six chapters hopping through different timelines in a non-linear fashion. That might be the sign of the literal origins (it is based on novel by a hugely popular Japanese author Keisuke Sone), but it is also a homage to classics of the American post-modernist darkly humorous thrillers by the Coen brothers (there are echoes of both “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men” narrative-wise) told in the fashion of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” Kim tries and ultimately succeeds to emulate.

That kind of re-contextualization might be a tough bite to chew for an inexperienced filmmaker, but Kim seems like someone who knows what he is trying to achieve, even if the viewers are left in the dark for a long period of time. His basic storytelling is clever and efficient, with both the sense for particular details and wider social landscape, with the use of the colour scheme both for coding the character’s intentions and painting the worlds of the rich and the poor being one of the movie’s high points. The editor Han Mee-yeon deserves the praise for his works, and so do the cinematographer Kim Tae-sung and the production designer Han Ah-reum.

The writer-director Kim Yong-hoon is equally successful in the realization of the actors’ potentials, especially for those in the leading roles. The dynamics between Joong-man and his mother is simply brilliant thanks to Bae Seong-Woo and Yun Yuh-ying’s amazing acting, while Jeon Do-yeon’s Yeon-hee is one of the most memorable opportunistic movie psychopats recently. Jung Woo-sung is also at the top of his game as a man who is just too involved with the wrong kind of crowd to defy his unfortunate destiny.

“Beast Clawing at Straws” is not a flawless masterpiece and Kim Yong-hoon has made some of the wrong steps both as a writer and as a director. Unlike his knack to highlight the ironic details in a stylish way, his treatment of the majority of the supporting characters is faulty, with most of them being sketched in a too broad manner. Also, the hard-hitting glockenspiel soundtrack is over-used in highlighting the key moments of tension and therefore too revealing. Nevertheless, it is quite a fun and a bloody movie ride about greed, lies and deception.