The LKFF returns this month, bringing the best in new cinema from the film capital of the Far East to London.
What is it about South Korea that makes its cinema so great? Perhaps it is the screen-quota system that has existed in one form or another since 1966, protecting a proportion of annual screenings for local product, and so guaranteeing a continuity (not to mention an audience) for the national cinema. Or perhaps it is the considerable inflow of capital funds into the film market since 2000, coinciding with a New Wave of directing talent. Or perhaps it is the country’s turbulent twentieth-century history, with violent civil conflict, political unrest and continuing Cold War paranoia and nuclear threat all engendering a rather peculiar artistic sensibility.
It may be none, or all, of these things, but there must be something in the water of the Han river to have turned the likes of Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon and Lee Chang-dong into some of the last decade’s most innovative and exciting directors by any measure. Cinephilia can be a cruelly fickle pursuit, abandoning one nation’s cinema as quickly as it champions another in that endless globetrotting quest for the ‘next best thing’, but those who have remained loyal to the Korean industry have been rewarded with a seemingly endless stream of films that blend lavish craftsmanship with a highly unpredictable handling of genre and tone, so that broad comedy, intense character drama, grotesque horror, spiritual mysticism and incisive political allegory can all come together in a sensual orgy of sight and sound.
This ‘anything goes’ approach ensures that there are always rich and varied pickings to be found at the London Korean Film Festival. This year’s event opens with the UK premiere of Lee Jeon-beom’s massive domestic hit The Man from Nowhere, in which a mysterious pawnbroker (Won Bin) is drawn back into the violence of his past when the young girl who lives next door is kidnapped by a vicious gang of organ harvesters.
Recently Korea has brought us many difficult films focussed upon aggressive adults tempered and redeemed by their relationships with children (Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser, Yank Ik-joon’s Breathless) – but in fact Lee’s movie is far closer to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, a reactionary revenger which unleashes a tormented hero upon unconscionably wicked criminals, with little room for moral grey areas. The Man from Nowhere is a deeply conventional film that is also deeply conservative in its politics – but what it lacks in nuance or narrative inventiveness it makes up for in sheer cinematic verve.
Something similar might be said for the festival’s closing film. Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid remakes Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name – except that where the original concerned a maid having an affair with her master in a middle-class home (reflecting the Korean bourgeoisie that was emerging in that decade), Im has updated the setting to a mansion belonging to the super-rich, and transformed his maid (here played by Jeon Do-yeon) into a far more passive figure. Im’s commentary on the gulf that exists between the ultra-privileged, über-entitled élite and those that serve its every whim is hardly subtle or particularly revelatory, but there is much to be admired in his management of the film’s aesthetics.
The exquisite perfection of the house’s interior design, and the sedate movements of the crane shots and aerial camerawork, all suggest a surface of sanitised control that will soon be ruptured by the passion, jealousy and vindictiveness concealed beneath, until the film’s apparent calm gives way to a baroquely explosive climax, followed by a bizarre coda. It is an unsettling, erotic social satire, perhaps not worthy of its Official Selection at this year’s Cannes, but certainly worth a look.
Jang Cheol-soo’s Bedevilled boasts beautiful natural island locations that it captures with even more astonishing cinematography. Yet unfolding on this flower-strewn, sun-soaked stage is a dispiriting human drama full of horrific dysfunction and repression. It is a tale of two women – the one a privileged, sophisticated city banker (Ji Sung-won) who has chosen to insulate herself from her responsibilities to others, the other an open and generous islander (Seo Yung-hee) who has become marooned in a life of physical and sexual exploitation. Their reunion after many years apart builds, slowly and deliberately, to despair, madness and murderous revenge – and when the blood finally begins to spill, the scenes’ casual understatement brings an uncomfortable humour to all the unhinged hysteria. This is Korean cinema to die for – confronting, confounding, and with a final image of delicate poetry to suggest that, while no man may be an island, perhaps every woman is.
Similarly excellent, although very different in its subject and style, is Park Chan-ok’s Paju. Told elliptically in overlapping flashbacks that span seven tragedy-filled years, this intense drama traces the complex evolving relationship between a guilt-wracked Christian political activist (Lee Seon-gyun) and his young, guilt-free sister-in-law (Seo Woo). Beginning and ending in scenes of thick fog, the film presents history as a series of cyclical repetitions whose full significance inspires either blinkered perspectives, or outright flight. Meanwhile the city of Paju’s development and modernisation is portrayed as a process of corruption, leaving only suffering in its wake. It is an unquestionably bleak film, but the low-key performances and involving narrative ensure that it also remains compelling to the end.
Politics also come into play in Jang Hun’s Secret Reunion which is concerned, like Shiri, JSA: Joint Security Area and Typhoon before it, with the persisting tensions between the North and South Koreas. That it is also an odd-couple buddy pic illustrates perfectly the way that Korean cinema uses and abuses established genres to its own ends. Six years after the careers of both North Korean undercover spy assassin Song Ji-won (Gang Dong-won) and NIS agent Lee Han-kyu (Song Kang-ho) were brought to a sudden end in the same mutually botched incident, the two run into each other, and begin working together in Lee’s private detective agency, all the while secretly investigating one another in the hope of getting back their old jobs.
Inevitably this will turn out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship – but their history, in the form of the psychopathic North Korean sleeper assassin known as ‘Shadow’ (Jeon Gook-hwan), will find a way of catching up with them anyway. Secret Reunion may be light in touch, but its gentle comedy helps it to negotiate a political minefield with a surprising amount of humanity, by suggesting that those from the North and the South are equally flawed.
Also screening at this year’s LKFF are two films dramatising actual incidents in the Korean War (Yi Sang-woo’s A Little Pond and John H Lee’s 71: Into the Fire); a retrospective of films by Jang Jin (Guns and Talks, Someone Special, Murder, Take One and Good Morning President); Kim Jee-woon’s long-awaited psycho-thriller I Saw the Devil; Kang Dae-gyu’s women’s prison drama Harmony; Lee Jeong-ho’s horror mystery Bestseller; Kang Woo-suk’s comics-based conspiracy thriller Moss; and Lee Joon-ik’s graphic novel-based period political actioner Blades of Blood. On top of all this, there will be director Q&A’s, short film showcases, and a talk with Jang Jin (moderated by Asian film expert Tony Rayns) on the future of Korean cinema.
It may be none, or all, of these things, but there must be something in the water of the Han river to have turned the likes of Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon and Lee Chang-dong into some of the last decade’s most innovative and exciting directors by any measure. Cinephilia can be a cruelly fickle pursuit, abandoning one nation’s cinema as quickly as it champions another in that endless globetrotting quest for the ‘next best thing’, but those who have remained loyal to the Korean industry have been rewarded with a seemingly endless stream of films that blend lavish craftsmanship with a highly unpredictable handling of genre and tone, so that broad comedy, intense character drama, grotesque horror, spiritual mysticism and incisive political allegory can all come together in a sensual orgy of sight and sound.
This ‘anything goes’ approach ensures that there are always rich and varied pickings to be found at the London Korean Film Festival. This year’s event opens with the UK premiere of Lee Jeon-beom’s massive domestic hit The Man from Nowhere, in which a mysterious pawnbroker (Won Bin) is drawn back into the violence of his past when the young girl who lives next door is kidnapped by a vicious gang of organ harvesters.
Recently Korea has brought us many difficult films focussed upon aggressive adults tempered and redeemed by their relationships with children (Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser, Yank Ik-joon’s Breathless) – but in fact Lee’s movie is far closer to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, a reactionary revenger which unleashes a tormented hero upon unconscionably wicked criminals, with little room for moral grey areas. The Man from Nowhere is a deeply conventional film that is also deeply conservative in its politics – but what it lacks in nuance or narrative inventiveness it makes up for in sheer cinematic verve.
Something similar might be said for the festival’s closing film. Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid remakes Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name – except that where the original concerned a maid having an affair with her master in a middle-class home (reflecting the Korean bourgeoisie that was emerging in that decade), Im has updated the setting to a mansion belonging to the super-rich, and transformed his maid (here played by Jeon Do-yeon) into a far more passive figure. Im’s commentary on the gulf that exists between the ultra-privileged, über-entitled élite and those that serve its every whim is hardly subtle or particularly revelatory, but there is much to be admired in his management of the film’s aesthetics.
The exquisite perfection of the house’s interior design, and the sedate movements of the crane shots and aerial camerawork, all suggest a surface of sanitised control that will soon be ruptured by the passion, jealousy and vindictiveness concealed beneath, until the film’s apparent calm gives way to a baroquely explosive climax, followed by a bizarre coda. It is an unsettling, erotic social satire, perhaps not worthy of its Official Selection at this year’s Cannes, but certainly worth a look.
Jang Cheol-soo’s Bedevilled boasts beautiful natural island locations that it captures with even more astonishing cinematography. Yet unfolding on this flower-strewn, sun-soaked stage is a dispiriting human drama full of horrific dysfunction and repression. It is a tale of two women – the one a privileged, sophisticated city banker (Ji Sung-won) who has chosen to insulate herself from her responsibilities to others, the other an open and generous islander (Seo Yung-hee) who has become marooned in a life of physical and sexual exploitation. Their reunion after many years apart builds, slowly and deliberately, to despair, madness and murderous revenge – and when the blood finally begins to spill, the scenes’ casual understatement brings an uncomfortable humour to all the unhinged hysteria. This is Korean cinema to die for – confronting, confounding, and with a final image of delicate poetry to suggest that, while no man may be an island, perhaps every woman is.
Similarly excellent, although very different in its subject and style, is Park Chan-ok’s Paju. Told elliptically in overlapping flashbacks that span seven tragedy-filled years, this intense drama traces the complex evolving relationship between a guilt-wracked Christian political activist (Lee Seon-gyun) and his young, guilt-free sister-in-law (Seo Woo). Beginning and ending in scenes of thick fog, the film presents history as a series of cyclical repetitions whose full significance inspires either blinkered perspectives, or outright flight. Meanwhile the city of Paju’s development and modernisation is portrayed as a process of corruption, leaving only suffering in its wake. It is an unquestionably bleak film, but the low-key performances and involving narrative ensure that it also remains compelling to the end.
Politics also come into play in Jang Hun’s Secret Reunion which is concerned, like Shiri, JSA: Joint Security Area and Typhoon before it, with the persisting tensions between the North and South Koreas. That it is also an odd-couple buddy pic illustrates perfectly the way that Korean cinema uses and abuses established genres to its own ends. Six years after the careers of both North Korean undercover spy assassin Song Ji-won (Gang Dong-won) and NIS agent Lee Han-kyu (Song Kang-ho) were brought to a sudden end in the same mutually botched incident, the two run into each other, and begin working together in Lee’s private detective agency, all the while secretly investigating one another in the hope of getting back their old jobs.
Inevitably this will turn out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship – but their history, in the form of the psychopathic North Korean sleeper assassin known as ‘Shadow’ (Jeon Gook-hwan), will find a way of catching up with them anyway. Secret Reunion may be light in touch, but its gentle comedy helps it to negotiate a political minefield with a surprising amount of humanity, by suggesting that those from the North and the South are equally flawed.
Also screening at this year’s LKFF are two films dramatising actual incidents in the Korean War (Yi Sang-woo’s A Little Pond and John H Lee’s 71: Into the Fire); a retrospective of films by Jang Jin (Guns and Talks, Someone Special, Murder, Take One and Good Morning President); Kim Jee-woon’s long-awaited psycho-thriller I Saw the Devil; Kang Dae-gyu’s women’s prison drama Harmony; Lee Jeong-ho’s horror mystery Bestseller; Kang Woo-suk’s comics-based conspiracy thriller Moss; and Lee Joon-ik’s graphic novel-based period political actioner Blades of Blood. On top of all this, there will be director Q&A’s, short film showcases, and a talk with Jang Jin (moderated by Asian film expert Tony Rayns) on the future of Korean cinema.
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