My Sassy Girl (2001)

Minggu, 10 Agustus 2008

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)

Kamis, 09 Agustus 2007

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)

Selasa, 19 Juni 2007

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)

Sabtu, 02 Juni 2007

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)

Minggu, 06 Mei 2007

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.