This is not a review of DECISION TO LEAVE - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 10

If DECISION TO LEAVE were made by anyone other than Park Chan Wook would it have been programmed in the BFI London Film Festival?  Because let's be clear, name recognition of a former icon aside, there was precious little in the first hour of this film to indicate we were watching a film of note.

As the movie opens we discover than old Korean functionary has had a deadly accident while mountaineering.  His young Chinese widow (Tang Wei - LUST, CAUTION) is under surveillance by Korean cop (Park Hei-Il). She doesn't seem to grieve and isn't surprised by his death as he was apparently being blackmailed.  She also murdered her own mum and is on the run from the Chinese authorities.  She claims it was a mercy killing.

For the first hour of the film that's all we get. Her being opaque and him becoming obsessed with her. But zero sexual chemistry or suspense. The only actual entertainment is from the cop's comedy sidekick who suspects the widow for xenophobic reasons and literally does drunken pratfalls. 

Maybe it turned into a masterpiece of VERTIGO like plotting and LUST/CAUTION style sexual chemistry in its final hour. I didn't stick around to find out. And reading reviews I feel like this film is the Emperor's New Clothes. No matter how good the final hour was or wasn't there's no excuse for the indulgence of the first. 

DECISION TO LEAVE has a running time of 138 minutes.  The film played Cannes 2022 where Park Chan Wook won Best Director. It also played Toronto. It was released in the USA this week and will be released in the UK the following week.

PARASITE

PARASITE is a rightly critically acclaimed black comedy/political satire from Korean director Bong Joon Ho. It's a film that speaks to the profound income inequality that we see around the world, and the social anxieties that the super-rich invent to give them something to do.  The rich family in question here lives in a beautifully modernist house - mother, father, spoiled son, elder daughter.  They are placed in contrast with a poor family living in one of Seoul's "sub-basements" - dank, fetid, insect-infested, sub-standard housing for the city's poorest residents - prone to flood during the rainy season. Improbably, the son in the poor family gets an in to the rich family, pretending to be a university student to tutor the daughter. He then contrives to have their driver and housekeeper sacked and to get his own mother and father to replace them. He also gets his sister into the house as a tutor for the small kid.  Of course they have to pretend not to know each other. The movie reaches its climax when the rich family go away on holiday, and the old housekeeper comes back, vowing revenge, and with her own dark secret to protect.  The result is skewering, violent, social revenge. Because as feckless and laughably superficial the rich family is, they still have their prejudices - expressed here as the fear of the fetid stink of the sub-basement dwellers.  They can lock the poor out of their gated house, but that smell comes over the walls.....

This film is beautifully constructed, acted and built.  The modernist house and sub-basement are meticulously created.  The script is at turns hilarious, tragic and absurd.  The performances both move one to tears and laughter. The film isn't without its longeurs in the middle section, and I would've ended it ten minutes before it ends, but this is nothing in a film of such originality and audacity.  There's a particular scene, where the poor family sneak out of the rich house on the hill, through pouring rain and flooded streets, down and down through the city's streets and staircases, to the hellish world of the flooded sub-basement. It's poetic and tragic.

As with THE KINGMAKER this is a film that speaks to us in the West. The income inequality and class prejudice resonate.  You could easily remake this film set in the OC, or in Notting Hill.  And I'm sure somebody will.

PARASITE has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R.  The film played Cannes 2019 where it won the Palme D'Or by unanimous verdict. It also played Telluride and Toronto. It opened in the USA in October and opens in the UK on February 20th 2020.

THE SPY GONE NORTH - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Seven

THE SPY GONE NORTH is a straightforwardly directed, but nonetheless gripping spy thriller set in mid-1990s South and North Korea that both educated me about political corruption on both sides of the border AND actually had me in tears by the end!  Directed by Yoon Jong-bin using a script by Kwon Sung-hui, the film is a fictionalised retelling of the Black Venus saga - wherein a South Korean spy posed as a businessman and ended up fencing North Korean antiques to fund the regime and even got to meet Kim Jong-Il! The aim was to win the trust of the North Koreans so that he could scout out their alleged nuclear facilities to see if they were really active.  So far so John le Carre. The weirder part of the story - or perhaps the more resonant in this age of Russian election interference - is how Black Venus uncovered his boss' plot to fix the SOUTH Korean elections in favour of the 50-year long ruling party. Apparently, every time the left-wing opposition looked likely to take power, the South would pay the North to launch a military incursion to scare Southern voters into voting for a right-wing strong man!

There's nothing not to like in this film. I was utterly invested in the mission of Park Suk-young and his unlikely friendship with the North Korean trade emissary, Director Ri. I loved the director's audaciousness in depicting the Supreme Leader. And I also loved his courage in showing us the cost of the Kim regime - famine, children picking over corpses.  These scenes are rightly disturbing, and while the South also has its corruption, they prevent the viewer from drawing any false equivalences.

THE SPY GONE NORTH has a running time of 137 minutes. The film played Cannes 2018 and was released in the USA in August. It does not yet have a UK release date. 

BAMSEOM PIRATES SEOUL INFERNO - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

BAMSEOM PIRATES SEOUL INFERNO is amazingly mischievous fun for about the first hour of its running time. Two kids form a shitty punk band in the great tradition of The Sex Pistols. They're self-consciously bad at playing their instruments, but have a lot of attitude.  In a vague, kind of post-modern way, they're too cool to actually have an ideology. They're post-ideology. They're against tuition fees and privatisation and authoritarianism and boring middle-class stuff like learning to play an instrument.  When people claim they can't understand their lyrics, they do a gig with a powerpoint presentation, but then claim they deliberately made the lyrics un-understandable. They come across as very smart, very funny and creating their own mythos on the fly.  The one thing they're not, is, truly subversive. In the same way that The Sex Pistols ruffled a lot of insecure people in the UK, Bamseom Pirates are deliberately provocative but neither are enemies of the state.  The Pistols said they were the antichrist, but they weren't satanists. So when Bamseom Pirates mention North Korea, or Kim Jong Il, that doesn't make them North Korean spies. This seems so obvious you wonder why I'm saying it until you realise that the Pirates' manager was prosecuted under South Korea's National Security Law for, effectively, treason, for retweeting a North Korean tweet. And when he went to trial, the band and their lyrics effectively went on trial too.  

This latter half of the movie was absolutely fantastic in its philosophical and emotional impact.  I was forced to reassess my dismissive views of the band as CLEARLY as funny and OBVIOUSLY not spies. After all, if I lived in Seoul, tens of miles from the North Korea border, in range of missiles, would I be so confident and tolerant of dissent and satire? Would I perhaps become as intolerant and impatient as the serious young men on the debate programme on TV questioning why we should tolerate such childish behaviour?  Emotionally, watching this lighthearted prankster turned into a shy, submissive, apologetic wreck by a disproportionately serious and angry trial was heartbreaking.  The manager keeps speaking of being confused. He hates authoritarianism and was always so proud to be satirical in the South, knowing this behaviour would not be tolerated in North Korea. So when he's prosecuted under the easily abused National Security Law, it's as if the border doesn't exist. I could've cried for him and his crushed spirit.  In that, BAMSEOM PIRATES SEOUL INFERNO became an exceptionally good doc - because it not only shone a light on an issue I didn't know existed, but it provoked me and moved me too.

BAMSEOM PIRATES SEOUL INFERNO has a running time of 120 minutes. There are tickets available for both screenings at the BFI London Film Festival. 

THE HANDMAIDEN - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day Four

As a huge fan of Chan-Wook Park's work and a huge fan of Sarah Water's novel Fingersmith, I had high hopes for Park's South Korean adaptation of this ingenious erotic thriller, and I was not disappointed.  Park's transposition of the story from Victorian London to 1930s occupied Korea works brilliantly well, while remaining faithful to the construction and emotional arc of the original text. This is a personal and creative but respectful adaptation at its finest.  Park's embellishments only serve to further enhance the thematic concerns of the original, and help create a sensory experience of rare  delight.

The novel and film begin with a con.  The suave Fujiwara poses as a Count to woo the naive heiress Hideko, sending in his ally Sook-hee to pose as her maid and help win Hideko over. The plan is for Fujiwara to woo Hideko, elope with her, take her fortune and then lock her up in an asylum.  But the plans become complicated when the maid, Sook-hee, develops feelings for her mistress - feelings that are apparently reciprocated.  But just how innocent are all the parties involved?  What exactly has Hideko's tyrannical uncle been training her to read in his heavily guarded library.  And just how will Fujiwara and Sook-hee go to gain a fortune?  To say more of the plot would be to ruin one of the most finely and elegantly constructed novels I've read.  Suffice to say that fans of its intrigue won't be disappointed, and that even if you know the big reveals, you'll still be on the edge of your seat.  

STOKER

"A high camp B-grade thriller more akin to Dark Shadows than Oldboy."

What is that we love about the cinema of Park Chan Wook?  For me, there are so many things:  the carefully staged tableaux; the precise use of colour as symbolism; the willingness to mine the very darkest areas of human psyche - sexual violence, incest; the melodramatic plots of vengeance and redemption; the rich vein of black humour.  When you watch a Park Chan Wook film you know you will be taken somewhere unique and memorable.  Looking back now, it's been years since I've seen his work, but certain scenes are still vivid in my mind.  Lady Vengeance plunging her face into the redemptive white tofu.  Her daughter holding a knife to her throat, threatening her Australian adoptive parents to take her back to Korea.  Mr Vengeance slashing the Achilles tendons of his victim in the water.  The amazing, almost video-game shot, of Oh Dae Su violently dispatching the guards of the prison-hotel. 

All this should explain why I was left cold by STOKER.  It's Park Chan Wook's first American film, and is about as watered down and weak-minded as Wong Kar Wai's incredibly disappointing MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. I'm not sure whether something was literally lost in translation, or whether the American producers constrained Park Chan Wook's trademark hypnotic excesses.  Maybe it was the script by Wentworth Miller,  better known as the actor who played Michael Scofield in Prison Break - a script that teases us with the potential for deep dark sexual secrets, and taboo attractions but doesn't have the courage to take us deep into depravity.  Which isn't to say that STOKER is a subtle, discreet film. While it dances round the edges of chaos, it contains performances of high camp.  Both Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode have line deliveries that are flat out funny, and not in a good way.  Too often scenes which should be menacing and uncomfortable are just absurd.

But to go back to the beginning, STOKER is not a horror film and certainly contains no vampires or references to Bram Stoker.  Instead, it plays like a high-camp B-grade thriller, akin to DARK SHADOWS.  We open with a kooky family in an isolated country house.  India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a withdrawn emo teenage girl mourning the death of her father Richard (Dermot Mulroney).  Her alcoholic mother (Nicole Kidman) flirts outrageously with her mysterious brother-in-law, but Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) seems transfixed on his niece instead. She resents him, but is also darkly attracted to him, and so chooses to overlook the strange and threatening events that seem to surround him.  Moreover, she is a slippery and unreliable point of view.  Is she fantasising, remembering, distorting the truth?  

All of this seems like a great set up for some truly messed up taboo familial craziness and violence, but sadly it all ends with a whimper rather than a bang.  By the time we got to anything faintly resembling craziness the movie had lost all credibility.  There was no emotional heft and investment similar to the Vengeance films, where I cared deeply what happened to the main characters. The only saving graces were Mia Wasikowska's finely modulated performance, cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon' luscious visuals and Nicholas deToth's editing.  There's a scene where Nicole Kidman's hair morphs into a field of grass.  It's the image that I'll remember in ten year's time, if I remember this poor excuse of a film at all.

STOKER played Sundance 2013 and will be released on March 1st in the UK, Ireland and the USA. It opens in Singapore and Taiwan on March 7th; in Greece, Italy and Romania on March 28th; in the Netherlands on April 11th; in Argentina and Iceland on April 19th; in Denmark on April 25th; in Belgium, France, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico on May 2nd; in Chile and Germany on May 9th; and in Australia and New Zealand on August 29th.

STOKER has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

OKI'S MOVIE

Hong Sang-soo’s quartet of short linked films features three characters—a young man, a young woman, and an older man—who study or work in the film department of a university. Each short reveals a little of the relationship between these characters, from different viewpoints, and mostly in retrospect.

Running through the quartet is the theme of filmmaking itself and the accompanying uncertainty of being able to realise one’s intentions within the medium (and the world outside it). This draws us into the fourth film where the young woman, Oki (Jung Yu-mi), presents a movie she has made in an attempt to assemble her own experiences at selected points in her recent life.

Overall, the linked films are unadorned in style: quiet, minimal, observational (perhaps this reviewer looks on these qualities a little too favourably generally), but they do make for a good disguise when the tone becomes darker, or poignant, particularly during two separate instances of question and answer sessions.

It is partly in these last-mentioned, unassuming scenes that the threads running through the films reveal the skill and intricacy of their pattern—when they separate off into two snowy walks concluding the quartet, it is a gently reflective parting. For this reason and at this time, with all the dazzling pictures currently nearing the finishing line of their season, OKI’S MOVIE may well be a sight for sore eyes.

OKI's MOVIE aka OK-HUI-UI YEONGHWA played Toronto and Venice 2010 and went on release in South Korea in 2010 and in France in 2011.  

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - STATELESS THINGS

STATELESS THINGS is a movie I admired rather than enjoyed. Indeed, so little did I enjoy it, so long did it drag, so obscure was its meaning, that I considered walking out. But I'm glad I persevered to understand the overall architecture of the film and something of its purpose. 

Kim Kyung-Mook's follows his FACELESS THINGS with another movie set on the fringes of contemporary South Korean society. The first forty-five moments focus on Jun - an illegal immigrant from North Korea who is exploited by his employer, forms a tentative relationship with a sweet girl - another immigrant - but eventually finds himself forced to trick for cash. The second forty-five minute segment moves to a more luxurious but no less sexually exploitative situation. Hyeon is a kept in a nice apartment by a closeted homosexual, tricking in his spare time, and caught in a deeply obsessive relationship. As the movie reaches its conclusive segment, I became very confused about what was going on. Jun and Hyeon clearly meet, there's a confused, suffocating finale, are they two aspects of the same man? Figuratively? Literally?

The directorial style goes from social realism in the first half, to showy and quirky in the romance sequence, to almost Lynchian in its obscurity in the final segment. All of which is unsettling. There is also a lot of very explicit homosexual sex, and perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of my day of screenings was to watch couples walk out of the homosexual sex scenes in STATELESS THINGS but not during similarly explicit but heterosexual scenes in SHAME earlier in the day. I guess it's still a sad indication of the world we live in.

STATELESS THINGS played Venice, Vancouver and London. It doesn't yet have a commercial release date.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 3 - THE DAY HE ARRIVES

THE DAY HE ARRIVES is an intriguing, slippery, funny little South Korean art-house flick, directed by Hong Sang Soo as a kind of vintage Woody-Allen-esque take on thirty-somethings drinking, flirting and ruminating on life, relationships and co-incidence. The trigger of the film is a semi-famous movie director called Yoo Seongjun visiting friends in Seoul from a self-imposed exile in a provincial university. He seems diffident, annoyed at fawning film-students and embarrassed by former colleagues. He's sentimental about an old love affair and yet throws himself at a pretty young girl in a bar. He seems compelled to relive the day he arrives over and over, each time events take a slightly different turn and shed light on characters and relationships. And the whole thing revolves around drinking and eating and drinking some more! The movie is hard to characterise. It's very funny, contains some on-point relationship insights - and yet feels somehow insubstantial - an exercise in writing around a funny central "Groundhog Day" concept. And yet I do find myself thinking about it - it has left its mark - and of all the films I have seen to date, it strikes me as the most original, and the one I'd love to see again. Definitely worth seeking out, and thanks to Filmland Empire for the tip-off. 

THE DAY HE ARRIVES / BOOK CHON BAN HYANG played Cannes 211. It doesn't have a commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest Day 10 - MOTHER / MADEO

South Korea is not submitting Park Chan-Wook's superb THIRST as its entry for the Foreign Language Oscar this year. Rather, it is submitting Joon-Ho Bong's MOTHER. The absurdist tone of his horror flick, THE HOST, carries over into this bizarre take on the crime thriller, in which a devoted mother sets out to prove that her mentally disabled son did not murder a young girl. TV actress Kim Hye-a stars as the mother, and utterly convinces of her crazy devotion to her son, but the overwhelming tone of this film is comedy and absurdity. Unfortunately for me, this wasn't enough to sustain the two hour run-time. If you want me to sit still for that long, you either need to take this movie into the dark underbelly of bourgeois life in the manner of David Lynch, or take the absurdity to its extreme logical conclusion as in Almodovar or Park Chan-Wook himself. By contrast, this film starts promisingly but is essentially well-made but rather tame. Certainly, there is nothing in the main body of the film to match the compelling opening scene of the mother dancing in a field, her face fixed in a grimace. At that point, I was reminded of the dancing dwarf in Twin Peaks, and thought I was in for a wild ride. No such luck.

MOTHER played Cannes, Toronto, New York and London 2009. It was released in South Korea and Australia earlier this year and opens in Japan next week. There is no UK or US release date as yet.

THIRST - As I live and breathe, you have killed me

Full disclosure: I am a massive Park Chan-Wook fan. I love everything about him: the carefully designed visuals; the black comedy; the ultra-violence; and at the heart of it all, the concept of the innocent caught in tragic circumstances. For many, OLDBOY is their favourite movie. It's arguably got the most fucked up plot motivation, and the infamous octopus scene. For me, LADY VENGEANCE is his most visually dramatic work. The only out-and-out failure was his previous, I'M A CYBORG BUT THAT'S OKAY. Daniel Plainview and I went to say that and could barely get through it. Shorn of the violence and the wicked humour, we just had this cutesy love story among mental patients. Once the "things to make and do" production design had been wondered it, there was nothing left to do.

Park Chan-Wook's new film, THIRST, sees him take a love story, as in CYBORG, but meld it to the crazy mixed-up world of the VENGEANCE triology. SYMPATHY "old-boy" Kang-ho Song plays the classic Park Chan-Wook protagonist, a genuinely good guy caught in crazy circumstances, Priest Sang-hyeon. He's such a nice guy he plays recorder to coma victims and volunteers for a deadly medical experiment. And no, he's not in it for the suicide martyrdom kick. Problem is, he gets a transfusion with vampire blood, which helpfully kicks the nasty illness, but only if he keeps drinking blood. The central tragedy and comedy come from this situation: a good men has an instinct to fuck and kill - tragic; a vampire priest starts nicking blood from a hospital and spewing blood over his recorder - funny! And so would have developed your classic tightly structured, insane-brilliant Park Chan-Wook movie.

The problem is that Park Chan-Wook inter-weaves his vampire flick with a domestic drama inspired by Zola. The vampire priest falls for an unhappily married girl called Tae-joo, played by Ok-vin Kim. She's married to a snotty arse called Kang-Woo (another SYMPATHY regular Ha-kyun Shin) and subjugated by his hideous mother Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim). As a classic Park Chan-Wook heroine, this weedy looking girl successfully manipulated the good priest into killing her snotty husband. Once again, both tragedy and comedy come from this. Tragedy in that the priest knows he has been manipulated, and that the girl delights in vampirism, but can't help loving the girl anyways; comedy in the way in which Park Chan-Wook depicts guilt.

THIRST contains some of the best work in Park Chan-Wook's oeuvre. The touching love scene where the priest lifts up the girl and puts her in his shoes. Or the scene where the guilty lovers fuck but the dead husband is literally between them. But I couldn't help thinking that this would have been better if Park Chan-Wook had focused on one story or the other rather than trying to cram everything into an over-long, meandering two and a half hour movie.

THIRST played Cannes 2009, where it won the Jury Prize, and was released earlier this year in South Korea, the USA, Canada, Singapore, Brazil and France. It is released in Germany, Poland and the UK on October 16th. It is released in Russia on October 29th and in Norway on December 26th.

I'M A CYBORG / SAIBOGUJIMAN KWENCHANA - Korean yodelling aside, this movie is a mess

Fans of Park Chan Wook's trademark Vengeance films will be bemused, but probably not amused, but his latest film I'M A CYBORG (BUT THAT'S OKAY). It's the story of a girl who is so traumatised when her granny is put in a mental institution that she imagines she is a cyborg. Her mission is to lose her sympathy so that she can kill all the doctors and give her granny her dentures back. I use the word "story" in its loosest possible sense. This movie has the thinnest of narrative arcs, and most of the time it feels haphazard and lacks momentum. The first hour was desperately boring and while the second hour did contain an emotional victory of sorts, the movie lingered on for a good 30 minutes after that. By the denouement, when the girl and her friend are sitting in a field, praying for lightning to strike, so were we, because at least that would mark an end to the movie. It would also have provided a far cooler ending than the limp scene Park Chan Wook actually offers up.

The really annoying thing is that I'M A CYBORG had the potential to be a really great movie. Not a classic Park Chan Wook movie, mind you, but a Korean Charlie Kauffman-esque voyage into whimsy and the imagination. The production design is beautifully imagined and rendered. There are flashes of comic brilliance: not leaast the Korean yodelling and the electro-static flying scene.

Still, for all that, even die-hard fans (among which I count myself) are going to find it hard to sit through this film.

I'M A CYBORG opened in South Korea in December 2006 and played Berlin 2007. It opened in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and France in 2007 and opened in Germany, Russia and Greece earlier this year. It is currently on limited release in the UK.

THE REEF aka SHARKBAIT aka PI'S STORY - a stinker by any other name would smell as rotten

As much as I hate the liberal earnestness of a movie like HAPPY FEET, there's something equally annoying about a kids movie with the moral center and profundity of a Sweet Valley High novel. THE REEF is a poorly animated CGI movie from South Korea featuring a series of mediocre voice talent who use the word "dude" too much. The plot sees a Nemo-esque cute fish seek refuge in a protected Reef after his family becomes sushi. He falls for a cute fish called Cordelia (Evan Rachel Wood in a career mis-step) but in true Karate Kid form, she is the preferred date of a bullying tiger shark. So, little Pi has to stand up to the mean shark in order to save his chick, with the help of a hard-as-nails turtle voiced by the embodiment of cinematic evil, Rob Schneider. Presumably, really small kids will be thrilled enough by the mere concept of animated talking fish but for anyone else, I suspect, intense boredom awaits.

THE REEF was released in South Korea in July 2006 and is currently playing in the UK. It opens in the Czech Republic on February 22nd and in the Netherlands on April 25th.

THE HOST/GWOEMUL - Shut up and scare me!

It is a testament to how much fun it is to watch a bunch of people being chased by an obviously CGI mutant beastie that THE HOST manages to be mildly entertaining despite its haphazard attempt at social and political commentary. The movie opens in contemporary Seoul, with a evil American* telling a spineless but horified Korean to pour a bunch of nasty chemicals down the sink and straight into the Han river. A couple of years later and a nasty fish-lizard -beastyie comes bounding out of the river eating Koreans and tourists and doing impressive back-flips. Now, let's be clear. This movie is NOT a horror movie. The beast is so obviously CGI - so ludicrously blundering in its movements - that you simply cannot be scared by it. The comedy also under-cuts the horror. The sweet school-girl has just been swiped by the beast and supposedly killed and we should presumably feel horrified by this fact. But then we cut to a mildly funny slapstick scene in which her squabbling family are simultaneously wailing and beating each other up. This is shortly followed by a scene where the family are escaping from a detention hall that could come straight out of a cartoon - complete with kitsch music.

The point is that this movie is fun rather than horrifying - silly rather than scary. If it had stuck to this simple mission it would've been worth a look. Problem is, it has delusions of grandeur and wants to make some kind of point about - and here I'm guessing - America's malign power over client states such as Korea; the evil of polluting the environment; how governments lie to their citizens....I say I'm guessing because the movie never really takes aim at anything in particular. Rather it throws random accusations and motifs in the air like so much confetti - including a pretty major plot strand about how the evil monster is THE HOST of a nasty SARS-like virus. That plot strand - the one that gives the movie its name(!) - is just left to fizzle out. Overall then, THE HOST is a bit of a mess - mildly entertaining and worth catching on TV - but hardly worth a trip to the cineplex.

*At this point, having been warned of the movie's anti-American stance by the reviews, I thought: "Oh no!" If I go to see a mindless evil monster B-movie then that's what I want: not a bunch of agitprop. However, it turns out that this story - a story that I had assumed was just crass anti-americanism - is based in fact! Still, it's a big leap from saying one american was reckless to saying ALL americans have the environmental record of Dubya.

THE HOST/GWOEMUL played Cannes and Toronto 2006. It went on release in South Korea, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, opens in France in a fortnight and in the US and Spain in January and February respectively.

Overlooked DVD of the month - A TALE OF TWO SISTERS/JANGHWA, HONGRYEON

This month's overlooked DVD is A TALE OF TWO SISTERS. It's a superb mind-bending movie from the South Korean director who made this year's stand-out gangster movie, A BITTERSWEET LIFE. In fairness, it's by far not a hidden jem in South East Asia - indeed in South Korea it's one of the highest grossing movies of all time. But it got a super-limited release in the UK and deserves a lot more recognition. So here goes....

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS is more of a psychological thriller than a typical horror movie, although it does contain flashes of gore and some truly frightening material. The movie is based on a truly Grimm fairy tale about two young sisters who go to live with their father and wicked stepmother in the countryside. Director Kim Jee-Woon knows how to scare an audience. He starts off with a scene is a sterile white room - perhaps an asylum. A girl is brought in. We cannot see her face and she will not respond to the doctor's questions or the photograph of a seemingly happy family. We then cut to the events of the story. The opening half hour has a slow, worryingly calm tone. The family move to the kind of claustrophic, colour-saturated countryside that evokes those menacing forests of Litte Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast. But then little cracks start to appear. One sister starts acting up with the stepmother. There are arguments followed by a macabre dinner party. The father withdraws into himself and the colour-coding becomes even more heightened. The strange occurences come thick and fast now. What really happened to the girls' mother? How wicked is the stepmother? Why are there sounds coming from beneath the floorboards and the kitchen sink?

The first time I watched this movie at the cinema I had really no clue what was going on and when I got some inkling near the end it was a complete mind-explosion. I had to go back and watch it again. It's that kind of movie. I've since watched it a couple more times and always pick up more about the story but also appreciate more the detailed and deliberate use of colour, props and editing. Upon reflection this movie reminds me of a complex elegant puzzle that gives great intellectual satisfaction once you've worked it out but also pleases aesthetically. Not to mention the blood-curdling horror!

So, as far as I am concerned, this is the best horror flick I've seen since THE SHINING - but then I really go for the psychological stuff. It's beautifully put together, satisfies on many levels and never gets old.

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS was released in South Korea in 2003 and in the US and UK in 2004. It is now available on DVD including a deluxe two disc set that features extensive interviews with cast and director and full audio commentaries. Apparently there is going to be a Hollywood remake released in 2008, but as the South Korean has vowed to avoid it like the plague I suggest you do likewise!

Overlooked DVD of the month - JOINT SECURITY AREA

JOINT SECURITY AREA is a fascinating, flawed but brilliant movie by acclaimed South Korean director, Park Chan Wook. Indeed, JOINT SECURITY AREA was the movie that catapulted Park Chan-Wook to fame in South Korea and persuaded the studio to give him licence to do pretty much anything that he wanted to for his next film. They must surely have been shocked to see him produce the baroque, visually beautiful, extremely violent revenge dramas: SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE, OLDBOY and LADY VENGEACE. To my mind, JSA is a far less successful film that these revenge movies, but it is still far better than most of the stuff you'll find at your local multiplex. Moreover, it is worth watching because it contains important techical advances for South Korean cinema, not to mention the fact that it bravely tackles the taboo subject of North-South relations.

JSA is a straightforward adaptation of a popular South Korean book called DMZ - De-Militarized Zone. It deals with the relations between Communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. Despite the cessation of hostilities at the end of what we in the west refer to as the Korean War, North and South Korea are still at war. They are separated by the DMZ on the 38th parallel. This is literally a wide trench policed on either side by soldiers with the United Nations Neutral Nations Security Commission trying to keep the peace. The story revolves around a shooting incident. Each side blames the other, and the UN brings in Major Sophie Jean, a half-Korean, half-Swiss soldier, to investigate the matter.

Major Sophie Jean is played by the future Lady Vengeance. She does a serviceable job in a difficult role. Her ability to act the English speaking lines is limited by her strong Korean accent - a notable flaw in a character supposedly raised in Geneva. Moreover, I found the framing device of having an investigator try to work out "what really happened that night" is weak. It throws up a red herring. A lot of viewers get obsessed by the precise chain of events that night, as though this were a straightforward thriller. I suppose that, in defence of the scriptwriter, including the Major Jean character allows us to see how impotent the UN are in this situation. Cynics tell Major Jean that there is no such thing as neutral diplomacy - she will have to pick a side. Worse, to preserve peace she will have to hide the truth. Sadly, the film never really explores how she feels about her position as a designated investigator that everyone wants to fail.

For me, the real meat of the story is not the UN investigation, which looks a bit sub-CSI and severely bogs down the first half hour of the movie. JSA is great not because it is an effective thriller. It is great because it is a fascinating study of how people get to know each other in spite of the misconceptions they have about each other. In other words, it is a good old-fashioned character study that sinks or swims (I think the latter) according to how good the actors are. This is where director, Park Chan-Wook hits pay-dirt, because he has four great actors performing superb dialogue. The idea is that a low-level South Korean soldier, Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (played by Byung-Hun Lee) meets a North Korean soldier, Sgt. Oh Kyeong-pil. Sergeant Oh has travelled abroad, and can see through the propoganda. He realises that one poor bastard on sentry duty in no-man's land is as fucked as another, no matter whether a Communist or capitalist. Soon, Sgt. Lee's sidekick, Private Nam Sung-shik and Sgt. Oh's sidekick, Jeong Woo-jin (Ha-kyun Shin, who played Ryu in SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE) are also meeting up. The four soon become firm friends - swapping candy, soft porn., and happily farting in each other's presence. The friendship even survives the first DMZ alert, when each side starts firing at the other. Suddenly the stakes are higher. What happens if it becomes a shooting war and they are ordered to kill each other? Or what happens if the southerners are shelled by their own side when the visit their friends in the north? Of course, this being a war-zone, pally chats about cookies cannot last forever and it all ends up in the bloodbath that Major Jean is sent to investigate. (I am not ruining the plot, by the way - the movie opens with the "incident" and works back to the start of the friendship.)

Despite the obvious technical achievements of the piece and the lush reconstruction of the Korean De-Militarized Zone, I found JSA to be a flawed work. The lighting is often poor, the editing rough, and there seems to be an awful lot of photography that is cliched. For instance, when Major Sophie Jean arrives on a plane from Geneva, we have one of those stock shots of the underside of the plane as it comes in to land. Most importantly, fans of later films by Park Chan-Wook should bear in mind that he was basically a director for hire on JSA. This, and the fact that he was just younger and had a less developed style, means that the movie looks more like a conventional picture than a classic crazy, extreme, beautiful Park Chan Wook movie. Similarly, the orchestral score is fine, but it is used in rather an obvious manner. In fact, at times, the movie is scored like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with screetching violins at moments of high tension. There is none of the ironic juxtaposition of beautiful chamber music with horrific violence that we get in, say, LADY VENGEANCE. I only spotted two classic Park Chan Wook touches. First, near the end, when Major Sophie Jean is learning about her father in the pagoda, we have some nice dissolves from the ariel view of the padoda to the ariel view of her umbrella. Second, near the beginning of the movie, when we see the version of the shootings in the deposition, we see the nissan hut from the outside and a flashing light from behind the glass that is meant to represent the guns firing. Later, in sharp contrast, we have a scene where the guys are taking a group photo inside the hut. The camera cuts away to an outside shot, and once again we see the light flash from behind the glass. It's a great little motif, and emphasises the movie's message: that friendship and hostility are only a split-second away from each other.

JOINT SECURITY AREA was originally released in South Korea in 2000. It is available on DVD.

A BITTERSWEET LIFE - Yet another work of cinematic genius from South Korea

Maybe it's a phase, or maybe it's because only the cream of foreign cinema ever makes it to our shores, but every time I see a new South Korean film I am blown away by how different it is from the one I saw before and yet the same startling combination of extreme violence, visual style and emotional pull. So, as the DVD was released this week, allow me to unabashedly and unreservedly recommend A BITTERSWEET LIFE, directed by the same guy who brought us the outstanding horror flick, A TALE OF TWO SISTERS.

The plot looks like something from a hackneyed gangster flick. Mr Kang is a top mob boss who hires slick goons in well-tailored suits to run a string of bars and hotels, dealing in whores and other such illegality on the side. Indeed, most of the film takes place at night, in beautifully appointed night-spots lit by neon. One of Kang's most trusted henchman is a ridiculously good-looking and utterly self-composed young man called Sun-Wu. When we first meet Sun-Wu he is enjoying a quiet gourmet meal in an empty restaurent. He is interrupted by a call to "deal with" some troublemakers in a private room of the bar. Instead of rushing off to see what is happening, he quietly takes another bite of his dessert. Almost resignedly, he walks down to the backroom where he kicks the shit out of the troublemakers. He is a killing machine, but a diffident one at that.

Kang appoints Sun-Wu to find out if Kang's much younger girlfriend, Hee-su, is being unfaithful to him. Moreover, Sun-Wu is to "deal with her" if appropriate. Now, all jaded film-fans know that if an old man sends a young loyal henchman to guard his squeeze, the younger guy is going to fall in love with the girl, thus compromising his loyalty to his mentor. The twist in A BITTERSWEET LIFE is that Sun-Wu is not entirely sure what is happening to him when he meets Hee-Su. She is surely beautiful and elegant (it's the same chick from that crazy martial arts extravaganza Volcano High) and when he catches her in flagrante he cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. Instead, he asks her to forget about her boyfriend. She replies that you cannot just forget about love. At this point, Sun-Wu looks confused - as if amazed at the existence of such a thing as love while simultaneously struck by an inability to understand or feel it. Even at the end of the film, when asked why he couldn't pull the trigger, he remains inarticulate.

After this, the movie unwinds in the expected way. Mr. Kang feels betrayed by Sun-Wu's inability to carry out the punishment, and Sun-Wu is also caught in a plot concerning a rival gang-leader called Mr. Baek. We have all the "usual" stunningly-designed and stylishly-photographed extreme violence, including an unforgettable burial sequence and the most impressive close-range stabbing since CHOPPER. What elevates these plot machinations above the voyeuristic or just plain nasty is that we see Sun-Wu gain a real understanding of his feelings for Hee-Su and the life he has led. There are no sentimental last-minute Hollywood endings - just a painful and moving recognition of the cruelty of life. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it - a thought-provoking meditation on the simultaneous beauty and futility of existence, coupled with shoot-outs that would make Tarantino jealous.

I love this film.

A BITTERSWEET LIFE was shown at Cannes 2005 and was on release for about a nanosecond in the UK in January. It is now available on Region 2 DVD.

SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE - violent yes, but beautiful also

After the massive success of JOINT SECURITY AREA, South Korean director Park Chan Wook could have pretty much done anything he wanted to. What happened was that he took a giant step into left-field with a bizarre movie called SYMPATHY FOR MISTER VENGEANCE. At the time, the movie tanked at the Box Office. Little did anyone know that it would become the first in a trilogy of highly acclaimed "vengeance" movies. Upon the release of the final movie in the trilogy, LADY VENGEANCE, I am taking the opportunity to have a look back at the first two films in the trilogy.

SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE is, despite the title, a "sweet" movie. Why so? Because it features a lot of characters who are emminently charming and empathetic. Chief among these is a young guy called Ryu. His sister is chronically ill and in need of an expensive kidney transplant. When Ryu is sacked by his boss, his girlfriend convinces him to kidnap the boss' daughter in order to win a ransom to pay for the transplant. Ryu's position is deeply sympathetic and remains so throughout the kidnapping. This the genius of Park Chan Wook. There is a lovely scene where the little girl is watching TV, balancing on Ryu's knees - so intimate and caring. Mad props have to go to the actor portraying Ryu - a character who is a deaf-mute - and so must be made sympathetic by means of facial expression and physical comedy. Unfortunately, at the handover, things go wrong, largely because of the appearance of a tragi-comic figure played by Seung-beom Ryu - the fantastic actor from CRYING FIST and ARAHAN. At this point, it is the little girl's father who becomes Mr Vengeance and the movie spirals into extreme violence that is photographed beautifully - a hallmark of Park Chan-Wook's work. The final scene at the lake is haunting, and more recent movies, such as HOSTEL, which rip off some of its most horrific content, fail to replicate the beauty of the original.

Overall, SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE is a violent and horrifying film. The real brilliance is to make the characters funny, original, credible and genuinely sympathetic. The movie is at turns bizarre and ridiculous, and yet beautiful and memorable. It is an amazing combination to have pulled off - and a recipe that was honed and perfected in each following film.

SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE is available on DVD.

LADY VENGEANCE - vicious and nasty, but in a good way!

Park Chan-Wook a.k.a Mr. Vengeance, is a man in whose pysche you would not want to get lost. He makes nasty, vicious, blood-drenched revenge thrillers that are an absolute joy to watch. He gets horror in a way that, say, the producers of Final Destination 3 do not. He knows that there is nothing more nauseatingly spine-chilling than seemingly normal, buttoned-up, vaguely attractive middle-class people taking to each other with axes. A lot of the time, due to deft editing, you don't even see the gruesome acts. You see the 'before' and 'after' and your brain does the rest of the work. Your imagination is going crazy with the most lurid, horrific visuals but at the same time your sympathy is with the perpetrator rather than the victim.

LADY VENGEANCE is the third in Park's revenge trilogy, following on from SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE and OLDBOY. Thematically all three movies tread the same ground: the impossibility of reconciling the lust for revenge with the desire for a peaceful life. However, that is not to say that if you see one Park Chan-Wook film you've seen them all. LADY has a more muted colour palette than OLDBOY, almost to the point of using grayscale highlighted by Lady Vengeance's red eye-shadow. The use of violence is also more muted - the acts are more often off-screen, and people who felt grossed out at OLDBOY should give LADY VENGEANCE a try. And while we do see some of the surreal caricatures that we got in OLDBOY - not least in the rogue's gallery of inmates in the prison - in general, the characters "look" far more normal. To my mind, that makes the horror far more affecting - the stylistic balance has definitely tilted from Tarantino to Lynch and all to the good.

Reasons to watch LADY VENGEANCE: 1. Looks bloody amazing - every scene is like watching a well designed and choreographed ballet. 2. Wickedly complicated plot that sticks a finger in the eye (and indeed a pair of scissors in the back of the neck) of those who would dumb down cinema. Broadly speaking, Lady Vengeance went down for a crime she didn't commit, A-Team style, and is now out of prison and out for revenge on the actual perp. 3. Features the darling of Korean ultra-violence, Choi Min-sik, known to canny viewers as the all-out badass in OLDBOY and as the boxer with a heart of gold in CRYING FIST. 4. Despite endemic sadism, the movie manages to create a genuine emotional connection between the audience and Lady Vengeance. 5. Despite hard-core nastiness, the movie creates scenes of fantastically dark and piercing humour. 6. Best use of transparent plastic raincoats since AMERICAN PSYCHO.

Reasons not to watch LADY VENGEANCE: 1. If you are vegetarian, tree-hugging hippie, who might get traumatised knowing that a small dog is being shot at point-blank range just off screen, you should avoid this film.

LADY VENGEANCE played the 2005 London Film Fest. It opened in France in November 2005, and in the UK yesterday. It goes on limited release in the US on the 5th May 2006.

CRYING FIST - Searing South Korean drama

CRYING FIST is the latest movie from Seung-wan Ryoo, the South Korean movie director who brought us ARAHAN. ARAHAN is a really great post-modern martial arts film - mixing hyper-real action sequences with MTV dialogue and a healthy dose of slapstick.

By contrast, CRYING FIST is a dead serious, straight-up drama telling the story of two men who are in hopeless situations. One is a 43 year old ex-amateur boxer. He is in debt and a loveless marriage, and when his wife kicks him out he is reduced to fighting people in the street for cash. The second man is a young punk who learns to box in prison. He has a lot of aggression, little technical skill, and something to prove to his family. Both lead actors play against type in this film. The ageing boxer is none other than conflicted killer, Mr. OLDBOY, a.ka. actor Choi Min-Sik, who also appears as the nasty Mr. Beak in LADY VENGEANCE. The young punk is played by Seung-Beom Ryoo, the gormless hero from Arahan and the director's kid brother.

The first 90 minutes of the movie show these two men being degraded and defeated. It is painful to watch but compelling all the same - like watching a car crash in slow motion. There is no sentimentality, no deeper message, no sweeping orchestral score as in Ron Howard's CINDERELLA MAN.

In the final half hour, the two men meet in a boxing tournament. The fights are well choreographed but are shot with none of the balletic artistry of RAGING BULL. The director is very clear in communicating his belief that boxing is a nasty, ugly, painful thing to submit yourself to. To my mind, this is not a film arguing that redemption comes through boxing. Rather, the tragedy of these men is that they have so little hope, that boxing seems to them a redemption. The lack of a rip-roaring ROCKY-style final match has been criticised. But I think that it is a strength of the film that there is no good-guy facing off against a bad-guy. We have seen both of these guys treated like shit and want to see them both win. That is what makes the final scenes so engaging.

Overall, this is a movie that I admired more than enjoyed. It was a brave move for the director to steer away from cartoon kung-fu to straight-up boxing drama. It was an unusual move to have us sympathise with both of the protagonists. I found the relentless misery of the first 90 minutes a bit hard to take - but without them I would not have felt the full impact of the final 30 minutes. So I would recommend this movie, but be warned. It is a hard slog.

CRYING FIST was shown at Cannes in May where it won the Critics Prize for Best Film. It is currently on release in Hong Kong and the UK. There is no scheduled release date for Continental Europe or the US.