The feature debut of directors Kim Yeo-jung and Lee Jeong-chan is a curious entity. Based on the Naver webtoon, it opens firmly in the K-horror tradition of an evil child getting away with everything short of murder. Yet an early twist initially defies expectations, before ultimately giving in to them wholesale.
Single mother Young-eun (Kwak Sun-young), a swimming instructor by day, struggles with the increasingly disturbing behaviour of her 7-year-old daughter, So-hyun. When So-hyun pushes her to the edge, Young-eun makes a drastic decision. Cut to 20 years later: trauma cleaner Min (Kwon Yu-ri) has no memory of her childhood. When the wide-eyed and overly eager Hae-young (Lee Seol) abruptly inserts herself into Min’s life, that carefully rebuilt world begins to unravel.
Kim and Lee may think they’re leading us down a stream of red herrings, but they taught us how to swim in the first act. The literal translation of the Korean title (침범) is something like “invasion,” which gives you a pretty clear idea of the film’s trajectory. As fragments of Min’s past surface, as we surface in the land of psychological thrillers, it’s increasingly obvious that Hae-young isn’t just some quirky new friend. Gee, who could she really be?
It’s hard to know how to feel about SOMEBODY, a film that feels overstuffed with competing ideas. The first act is genuinely gripping, though the evil moppet trope is laid on thick. Once the film shifts into mystery mode, Kwon Yu-ri (or Yuri, to K-pop fans) is strong as Min, keeping everything close to the chest. Lee Seol, on the other hand, veers sharply into manic pixie territory, leaving little doubt as to where this is going.
Technically, this is a handsome film. From the crisp opening shots, transitioning from snowy winter landscapes to the sterile lines of an indoor pool, cinematographer Kim Dong-hyuk brings a precise, almost icy touch. The minimal score heightens the inherent tension.
Ultimately, SOMEBODY is just a muddled film. Perhaps too beholden to its source material, the narrative often stumbles from scene to scene, with few surprises left by the climax. A curious epilogue hints at deeper pathology, and it’s a shame Kim and Lee couldn’t weave more of that into the fabric of the film itself.
2024 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Kim Yeo-jung and Lee Jeong-chan | WRITERS: Kim Yeo-jung and Lee Jeong-chan | CAST: Kwak Sun-young, Kwon Yu-ri, Lee Seol | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Studio Santa Claus Entertainment, Contents Panda (South Korea) | RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)
The immutable law of all film festivals is this: there will be a Hong Sang-soo film, and you will see the Hong Sang-soo film. WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU (그 자연이 네게 뭐라고 하니), his 33rd feature in 30 years, is another opportunity to catch up. But if you’re already familiar with his work, you’ll know exactly what kind of terrain you’re entering.
Hong remains a keen observer of Korean social norms, often through the lens of male artists bumbling their way through long walks and booze-soaked self-reflection. Here, that avatar is Donghwa (Ha Seong-guk), a thirty-something aspiring poet who has rejected his wealthy family’s money. For the first time in three years of dating, he’s meeting his girlfriend Junhee’s (Kang So-yi) family at their Incheon home.
Initial conversations with her father (Hong regular Kwon Hae-hyo) are polite enough, but as the day progresses into night, and the alcohol flows, the carefully balanced social niceties start to unravel. Hong has long used his characters to reflect on class and art, and here Donghwa appears to be one of the most feckless examples of the model. He’s a listless poet who holds a verse together about as well as he holds his liquor. That is to say, poorly.
Through seemingly listless conversations, cigarette breaks, many meals and repeated voyages in Donghwa’s beat-up 1996 Kia, Hong’s commentary on art and money continues. The standout dinner scene sees Junhee’s father put Donghwa through an inebriate inquisition, gradually coaxing out a portrait of a man whose idealism may just be an excuse for inertia. It’s tense, but hilariously so. It’s ‘peak Hong’ as I’ve come to know it.
Hong seems even less interested in technical polish this time out, which is saying something. The low-budget camera lingers in long, often static takes. Awkward zooms drift in and out, pixelation obscures details, and night scenes are dim and fuzzy. It’s all deliberate, of course, a style that has long since become his signature rather than a limitation.
At nearly two hours, this is one of Hong’s longer efforts, but it never drags. Like the oversized meals that fill the screen, it’s hard not to keep coming back for seconds. For a filmmaker so committed to minimalism and repetition, Hong still manages to surprise, and WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU is one of his most successful outings in recent memory.
2025 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Hong Sang-soo | WRITERS: Hong Sang-soo | CAST: Ha Seong-guk, Kwon Hae-hyo, Cho Yun-hee, Kang So-yi, Park Mi-so | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Finecut | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)
You may not immediately recognise Hwang Byeng-Gug’s name, despite his quarter-century of credits in the South Korean film industry. Often billed in supporting or additional cast roles, Hwang has also directed features like Wedding Campaign (2005) and SIU (2011). Yet with YADANG: THE SNITCH (야당), he delivers a solid crime thriller that stands comfortably alongside its contemporaries.
The ‘yadang’ of the title refers to underworld slang for criminals who provide information to authorities in exchange for reduced or commuted sentences. In this case, that’s Lee Kang-soo (Kang Ha-neul), falsely imprisoned but now operating as a slick snitch for ambitious Prosecutor Ku Gwan-hee (Yoo Hae-jin). As Ku climbs the political ladder thanks to Lee’s intel, drug squad detective Oh Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon) begins to suspect foul play. A complex game of intrigue plays out as the lives of all three men become increasingly entangled.
There’s a lot going on in Hwang’s film. You may feel like you’ve seen some of it before. You may also feel like it flashes back and forward so often you’re experiencing chronal displacement. Yet at its core, this is a familiar formula executed with confidence, with Hwang ably constructing a complex ecosystem that feeds on drugs and corruption. Between raves and orgies, forced captivity, raids, a second snitch in rich girl Uhm Soo-jin (Chae Won-bin), and multiple chases, there’s almost too much jostling for space in this crowded web.
Yet somehow it works, largely thanks to the three leads. Superstar Kang Ha-neul — perhaps most recently seen by international audiences in Squid Game Season 2 — plays his informant as a cocky huckster to charming effect. Likewise, the ever-reliable Yu Hae-jin seems to relish dancing around the edges of outright villainy.
Slickly shot by Lee Mo-gae (I Saw the Devil, Exhuma), Hwang ensures the action rarely lets up across the two-hour runtime, from the opening car smash to a mid-film sting operation that’s big enough to feel like a finale. When the actual climax arrives, it’s a clever gotcha moment that ties off some of the threads — even if not all of them are fully woven in.
While YADANG can comfortably stand alone, it’s easy to imagine this spinning out into a full franchise — albeit one that has already publicly aligned itself with law and order via an anti-drug partnership with the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency. Either way, Hwang and his team have laid the groundwork for a rich universe of characters we’d be happy to revisit.
2025| South Korea| DIRECTOR: Hwang Byeng-Gug | CAST: Kang Ha-neul, Yoo Hai-jin, Park Hae-joon, Ryu Kyung-soo, Chae Won-been | DISTRIBUTOR: Plus M Entertainment, Well Go USA Entertainment | RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 April 2025 (USA)
Yeon Sang-ho has built a solid reputation on both the South Korean and international cinema scenes, from crossover hits like Train to Busan and Peninsula to the sci-fi outings Psychokinesis and Jung_E. With REVELATIONS (계시록), debuting worldwide on Netflix, he returns to his The King of Pigs roots with a gripping psychological thriller.
From the opening scene, Yeon frames his film as a slow-burning mystery. A young girl nervously enters the church of Pastor Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol), seemingly followed by Yang-rae (Shin Min-jae), an ex-con on the sex offender register. Min-chan attempts to recruit Yang-rae to his congregation, but the man quickly flees.
Later, when Min-chan’s own child goes missing, he assumes the criminal is to blame. His next actions have devastating consequences, setting off an impossibly twisty chain of events. As Min-chan scrambles to keep his mounting lies in check, he draws the attention of Detective Yeon-hee (Shin Hyun-been), who is investigating the disappearance of a parishioner—and has her own past connection to Yang-rae.
Yeon’s tightly structured screenplay is vaguely reminiscent of crime stories like Fargo—in the sense that an ostensibly good person makes a simple mistake and becomes so consumed by it that they keep compounding the problem. Yet REVELATIONS is almost entirely devoid of humour, instead lurking in the seedier corners of the city. Min-chan may be driven by divine revelation—hence the title—and there are light supernatural elements woven into Yeon’s story, but in every other respect, this follows the conventions of modern crime thrillers.
Much of the film’s success rests on Ryu Jun-yeol, who plays Min-chan with a compelling mix of cool detachment and desperate rage. A standout scene sees him confronting his wife, Si-yeong (Moon Joo-yeo), about her affair inside a car—a slow-burning moment of almost unbearable tension, heightened by the confined space and Ryu’s ability to shift moods in an instant.
REVELATIONS is a cut above the average thriller, pulling its many narrative threads together for a tense and satisfying climax. Yes, much of the plotting hinges on coincidence, but it remains a brisk affair even at 122 minutes. And in its closing moments, the film leaves plenty to unpack, ultimately challenging the very notions of good and evil.
So, you’re Bong Joon-ho. Your film Parasite unanimously wins the Palme d’Or, becomes the highest-grossing South Korean film in history, and pulls off the Guinness World Record feat of scoring Academy Awards for Best Picture, International Feature Film, Original Screenplay, and Director. Naturally, your next move is a sci-fi black comedy romance with Robert Pattinson.
For those only half-watching Bong’s career, this might seem like an odd, left-field pivot into Hollywood. But let’s not forget: Snowpiercer already took him there, and Okja brought the titular genetic super pig to Netflix screens. This is hardly new ground for a filmmaker whose tongue has always been planted firmly in cheek.
Based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, writer/director Bong leans into the same over-the-top satire as Okja, landing somewhere near Starship Troopers. The film follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his childhood friend Timo (Steven Yeun), who flee Earth for the offworld colony of Niflheim after falling into debt over a Macron business.
Without reading the fine print, Mickey signs on as an ‘Expendable’—a human drone sent in for the dangerous work. When he dies (which he has, sixteen times by the time we meet him), he’s simply printed again with his memories intact. Things get complicated when Mickey 17 is mistakenly presumed dead and Mickey 18 takes his place.
There’s very little subtlety to MICKEY 17, which might be one of the most glorious things about it. The expedition is led by failed political candidate turned cult leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), whose followers wear red caps with slogans on them. Yes, it’s that kind of picture. Yet in a film where Pattinson regularly flops out of a printing tube like meat, and Marshall’s wife Ylfa (a wonderfully unhinged Toni Collette) has an unhealthy obsession with sauces, you can’t afford to take half-bites.
One of the joys of the first half of the film is watching Pattinson’s take on the monotony of functional immortality. Between the daily grind and being dispensed in increasingly absurd fashion, Mickey 17 has resigned himself to eke out existence just as it is. A light romance with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who has remained his girlfriend since his first iteration, adds a sliver of emotional grounding.
With the arrival of Mickey 18—and a wonderfully chaotic dual turn from Pattinson—the film shifts gears. The discovery of giant bugs on Niflheim sets up broad satire on the nature of colonisation, religious fanaticism, and arguably, immigration as well. Here, Ruffalo and Collette deliver their batty best, skewering everything from conservative televangelists to political leaders like, well, you know.
There’s possibly too much happening in the last act of MICKEY 17, particularly during an extended denouement that tries to pull the rug out from under us more than once. Still, Bong’s film remains a sharp and enjoyable sci-fi flick with a brain—one smart enough to know when to be stupid.
2025 | USA, South Korea | DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho | WRITERS: Bong Joon-ho | CAST: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures (USA), Universal Pictures (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 137 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 March 2025 (Australia), 7 March 2025 (USA)
The Fantasia International Film Festival is back for it’s 27th edition in Montreal this year. Running from 20 July through 9 August, the final wave of titles has now been announced from the program.
The new additions are definitely something to get excited about, especially the Nicolas Cage retrospective and closing night film, the world premiere of We Are Zombies — from directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell — and a documentary about the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Fantasia (like The Reel Bits) always has Asia in Focus, and this year is even more special with their spotlight on South Korean cinema. With their latest announcement, there’s even more content from Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Director Lim Sun-ae follows her powerful debut An Old Lady (2020) with this film about a bookkeeper for a tech factory, where her awkward disposition has earned her the titular nickname. Her infatuation with a coworker leads her to cover-up his misappropriation of funds and she lands up imprisoned. When she is released, the coworker’s wife has an intriguing offer.
The Phantom
Lee Hae-young, who was the director behind the superior 2018 thriller Believer, returns with a spy drama is set in 1933 Korea, during Japanese colonial rule, and features a cast of Korean stars — Sol Kyung-Gu, Lee Ha-Nee, Park So-Dam, Kim Dong-Hee, and Seo Hyun-Woo to name a few — speaking almost entirely in Japanese.
The Concierge
Based on the beloved manga by Tsuchika Nishimura, here is a story about a hotel concierge who simply cannot say no to her clients. For animation fans, this will be a must: the film comes from the legendary Production I.G, has a script by Satomi Ooshima (Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko), and marks the feature-film debut of director Yoshimi Itazu, who has been a key animator in films for Satoshi Kon and Studio Ghibli to name a few.
Devils
This South Korean spin on FACE/OFF seems appropriate for a festival with a Nic Cage retrospective. Director Kim Jae-hoon’s debut sees Oh Dae-hwan opposite Jang Dong-yoon in a story of a cop on the trail of the bad guy, but wakes up looking and sounding like his target after an accident.
My Worst Neighbour
Lee Woo-cheol’s remake of a French romantic comedy (Clovis Cornillac’s film Un Peu, Beaucoup, Aveuglément) follows a pair of neighbours with one wall between them made of cardboard. Get your bingo cards ready, because you know this is going to go from bad first impressions to that magical kiss very quickly.
The Moon, Sky and You
Hei Yau Lin’s debut feature is made for The Hong Kong Polytechnic University that’s described as a “electric experimentation” and features a filet-o-fish-eating goldfish. Are you not sold yet?
Sand Land
Japanese manga creator Akira Toriyama, best known for Dragonball, also published a mini-series in 2000 about a desert world where water is the most precious resource. Following Satan’s son Beelzebub and his comrades on a quest, the film version comes to us from director Toshihisa Yokoshima (Cocolors).
White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell
The prolific Herman Yau is back with the third entry in this popular Hong Kong series. Haven’t seen the first two? There’s still time to catch up, but this is also billed as a standalone sequel with new characters.
The Abandoned
Taiwanese director Tseng Ying-Ting debuts this films about a grieving detective and her partner seeking justice for a mysterious series of murders that might be connected to an illegal migrant worker ring.
Baby Assassins 2
Unsurprisingly, this is a sequel to Baby Assassins (2021). Director Yugo Sakamoto’s film has action sequences that have been compared to the John Wick series, and people seem to like those, right? If the film doesn’t appeal, then at least acknowledge the brilliance of the title.
The Childe
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came! Actually this is a big South Korean action film from director Park Hoon-jung (The Witch Part 1 and 2) about a boxer finds himself hunted by multiple assassins. Fantasia uses the words “insane” and “comic book” in their description, so take that as you will.
Flaming Cloud
Another debut feature, this time from China’s Liu Siyi. In this piece of fantasy realism, Sangui sets out on a journey to find a cure and his long-lost love after she is cursed by mischievous deities with a sleep-inducing kiss.
Mad Cats
They’re so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully batty. Reiki Tsuno, known for playing Rembrandt in the Return to Nuke ‘Em High series, directs this film about a man who is on a quest to find his brother, at least if he can get past a pack of vicious monster cats determined to execute unscrupulous pet shop owners.
Miss Shampoo
Giddens Ko’s Tapei Film Festival opener follows the Mon Mon Mon Monsters and Til We Meet Again in this story of an unlikely romance between a mafia boss and a hairdresser. Did someone say The Beautician and the Beast?
Ride On
This became the subject of a viral post recently when someone mistakenly said it was a clip of Jackie Chan and his daughter watching all of his old films. While whole articles have been written about the reasons Chan is estranged from his actual daughter, the film RIDE ON does go on a retrospective through Chan’s career with clips from his filmography of 100+ movies.
The Sparring Partner
Ho Cheuk-Tin’s Hong Kong thriller takes inspiration from a real life double homicide case in 2013. A young man partners with his friend to murder and dismember his parents. Pleading not guilty to the crime, the film plays out as a courtroom drama.
Retrospectives
Celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and the Republic of Korea, there will be new prints of Lee Chang-dong’s PEPPERMINT CANDY (1999), Park Kwang-su’s CHILSU AND MANSU (1988), the legendary im Ki-young IO ISLAND (1977). There’s also a slew of other cult classics including A CHINESE GHOST STORY (Hong Kong, 1997),GOD OF COOKERY, MY HEART IS THAT ETERNAL ROSE (Hong Kong, 1989), and the anime RAMAYANA – THE LEGEND OF PRINCE RAMA (India/Japan, 1993)
The Fantasia International Film Festival is back for it’s 27th edition in Montreal this year. Running from 20 July through 9 August, the first wave of titles is already announced.
We’re always glad to see that Fantasia (like The Reel Bits) has Asia in Focus, and this year is even more special with their spotlight on South Korean cinema.
As accredited media, we’re looking forward to bringing you coverage all throughout the festival as usual. Here’s what we’ve seen from their Asian line-up so far.
New Normal
A few years ago, director Jung Bum-shik brought up Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. Now Fantasia is hosting the North American premiere of this “one-man horror anthology.” It features six interconnected tales of love and murder in this horror-comedy set in social media-obsessed, post-pandemic Seoul. Sounds a little bit universal, doesn’t it?
The Roundup: No Way Out
The third entry in the Crime City saga, set seven years after the events in The Roundup (itself a sequel to The Outlaws), involves Ma Seok-Do (played by Ma Dong-Seok, aka Don Lee), hunting down Riki, a yakuza-hired hitman and a dirty cop named Joo-seong cheol, who are vying control of the city.
The Night Owl
Ahn Tae-jin makes their directorial debut with this period thriller starring starring Ryu Jun-yeol (The Battle: Roar to Victory) and Yoo Hae-jin (Space Sweepers). Set in the time of the Joseon Dynasty, specifically the mid-17th century, it’s based on the mystery surrounding the death of Crown Prince Sohyeon.
Retrospectives: Take Care of My Cat + The President’s Last Bang
Celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and the Republic of Korea, some of the program is dedicated to looking back at South Korea’s film history. This includes a 4K restoration of Jeong Jae-un’s coming-of-age film TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (2001) and a special screening of the THE PRESIDENT’S LAST BANG (2005) by Im Sang-soo. More titles will be announced in coming waves.
Tokyo Revengers 2 Part 1 and 2
Meanwhile in Japan…. A couple of years ago, we said of the first Tokyo Revengers (Fantasia 2021) that it “manages to convey its complex tale in a a self-contained package. Indeed, if this is your first experience with the franchise, you might even be tempted to explore the world a little further.” Well, now’s the chance. Fantasia presents not one but two new entries in the saga as Takemichi must go back in time to save Mio (again), and find out how his involvement with the Tokyo Maji Gang ruined his real life once more.
People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind
Following several short and mid-length films, and a contribution to anthology 21st Century Girl, director Yurina Kaneko makes her feature length debut. Set in a “Plushies circle” at a university in Kyoto, this film adapts a novella from Ao Omae and explores introversion, sexuality, gender, and broader notions of tolerance. It really does sound like people who talk to plushies are kind.
Mother Land
The first South Korean stop-motion feature film in almost half a century, director Park Jae-beom’s animated adventure follows a young girl as she follows the North Star to the Ancient Forest and find its guardian and master, the great red bear of legend in an attempt to save her ailing mother.
It isn’t a film festival unless you’re seeing at least one Hong Sang-soo joint. A perennial favourite, the prolific filmmaker’s familiar motifs might feel a bit samey to the uninitiated. His characters regularly walk around the city, smoke, talk, drink soju, and more often than not wind up near a beach.
Hong certainly doesn’t change that formula for IN WATER (물안에서). It follows young actor/director Seoung-mo (Shin Seok-ho) and his two actor friends (Ha Seong-guk and Kim Seung-yun) on Jeju Island while making a film. They talk, split a pizza and drink, scout locations for shooting, and eventually film a few scenes. In other words, familiar Hong territory.
The difference here is where the director chooses to focus. Quite literally: Hong’s camera is often deliberately out of focus for many of the scenes. The effect is palpable. First and foremost, it switches off of the part of the film-watching brain that is always looking for details, ensuring that the dialogue rises to the fore. There’s a scene where the trio are looking intensely at a wall that the audience can’t properly see. All we can do in the surrounding scenes is listen to chat about motivations, lost savings, and past relationships.
So, what’s even more interesting are the scenes that Hong has chosen to keep in sharper focus. More often than not, these are ones where Seoung-mo is just hanging around outside their rental house, discussing the shopping, or simply looking at the sea. It’s almost as if to imply that these are the snapshots that stand out in memory.
Whether you choose to read this as the fog of memory or, as Hong will say in most interviews, an unintentional decision on the day, it remains one of his more interesting pieces in recent years for this point of difference.
Hong Sang-soo produces so many films that even by the time this made it from its Berlin debut in February to the Sydney Film Festival in June, a second 2023 feature (In Our Day) opened at Cannes. Difficult to keep up with, and harder to define, Hong’s small corner of cinephilia may continue to appeal to a very specific audience, but that’s probably why we keep coming back.
2023 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Hong Sang-soo | WRITER: Hong Sang-soo | CAST: Shin Seok-ho, Ha Seong-guk, Kim Seung-yun | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 61 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7-18 June 2023 (SFF 2023)
Beginning with The Quiet Family in 1998, Kim Jee-Woon’s remarkably dark comic streak and refined sense of cinema has earned him a legion of fans. It’s continued through crossover hits like A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) and I Saw the Devil (2010). Now, with COBWEB (거미집), Kim combines that love of cinema and black comedy by taking us through a rarely seen slice of South Korean cinema history.
During the 1970s, where Kim and co-writer Shin Youn-Shick lays our scene, South Korean cinema censorship reaches its peak under President Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian “Yusin System.” Films were laden with party policy (that is, government propaganda), and anyone who attempted to circumvent these rules would be blacklisted by the government.
In Kim’s film, director Kim Ki-yeol (Song Kang-ho) is plagued. He has just finished shooting his latest project, but a recurring dream convinces him that reshoots will turn it into a masterpiece. Taunted by critics and haunted by the shadow of deceased mentor Director Shin, he goes against studio boss Baek’s (Jang Young-nam) express wishes and calls back the cast for secret reshoots. It all has to be done in less than 2 days.
Enlisting the help of Mido (Jeon Yeo-been), heir apparent to the studio with no obvious qualification but her passion, he soon finds that the drama is happening all around him. Philandering star Ho-se (Oh Jung-se) is overwrought with emotion due to the pregnancy of Yu-rim (Krystal Jung), the apparent result of their on-set affair. The latter is being a diva, making unreasonable demands. In fact, all of them are hiding secrets, something a method actor playing a detective begins to deduce.
Highly self-referential and filled with inky dark humour, COBWEB is as tangled a lattice as its title would imply. The real-life Kim plays it all out in duelling narratives. There are the events of the set, ones that involve everything from plying officials with alcohol to internal squabbling. Both Kim Ki-yeol and Mido fancy themselves as actors at various points, and the results are deliberately terrible and hilarious.
Then there’s the film within a film, a black and white piece shot on lavish sets with soap opera plotting. The faux film is overwrought, a real melodrama of the highest order. Yet it’s done with such loving and knowing references that you’ll want to go back and check out the films of Kim Ho-Sun or Shin Sang-ok, the latter of whom was kidnapped by North Korea following the revocation of his South Korean filmmaking license.
At times it’s chaos on wheels, running at a frenetic energy that fills all 135 minutes of this intense bubble. This is especially true of the big finale, built around a single-shot climax that the fictional Kim is determined to complete. From the moment he yells action, it’s a flurry of movement. As an audience, we desperately want to see it work but are waiting for the penny to drop.
The closing moments of COBWEB play out the crucial scene in full, bringing the fictional film to a close inside the one we are watching. In one of the more meta moments, the festival audience I watched this with started applauding just as the credits rolled, only to see a vision of a faux audience doing the same. So, this is either a clever commentary on the participatory nature of film, or Kim just having some fun with us. Either way, it’s a wickedly joyful way to spend a few hours.
2023 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Kim Jee-Woon | WRITER: Shin Yeon-shick | CAST: Song Kang-ho, Lim Soo-jung, Oh Jung-se, Krystal Jung | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2023 | RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7-18 June 2023 (SFF 2023)
The 13th edition of KOFFIA appropriately features 13 films playing in Sydney(18 – 23 August), Melbourne(1 – 5 September), Canberra(1 – 3 September), Brisbane(8 – 11 September).
Here’s our picks of the films you simply can’t miss!
Special Delivery
The KOFFIA opening night film is a slick South Korean action film confirms the star power of Park So-Dam — as if there was any doubt in our minds. She plays driver skilled at delivering anything to anyone at any given time, backed by a cool attitude behind the wheel. When a former baseball player gets in too deep with gangsters, he plans to use the service to get the hell out of dodge. Yet when the bad guys catch up with him before Eun-Ha arrives, she winds up with his son Seo-won ( Parasite co-star Jung Hyeon-jun) in the backseat of her car. With both the crooks and the corrupt cops after them, it’s an adrenalin-fuelled race towards an indeterminate finish line. Read our full review.
Escape from Mogadishu
One of the biggest South Korean releases of the last year is a top-notch action thriller set against not-too-distant history. In January 1991, amidst rising rebellion and the ultimate collapse of Somali President Barre’s government, the South and North Korean embassies find themselves working together to flee the country before the violence escalates further. The aftermath of this event, and broader Somali Civil War, has famously been depicted by Ridley Scott in Black Hawk Down (2001). Although playing out on a more focused scale, and with a drastically smaller budget, Ryoo skilfully manoeuvres the audience to a bittersweet ending via a breathless series of spectacularly staged action sequences. Read our full review.
Broker
Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back. Following his French-language debut with The Truth, Kore-eda transplants his operations to South Korea. In this movie, a group of people, brought together by a baby box — a small space, where parents can leave behind their babies anonymously — set off on a journey that will lead to destinations they never expected. The announced cast so far includes Song Kang-Ho, Gang Dong-Won, Bae Doo-Na and Lee Joo-Young.
In Front of Your Face
It’s almost the law that a Hong Sang-soo film appears at any film festival, and doubly so at KOFFIA. This one follows a middle-aged former actress living in the United States who returns home to South Korea to reconnect with people from her past and atone for her various transgressions. Sounds like the perfect playground for
Decision to Leave
Speaking of heavy-hitting directors, no less a figure than Park Chan-wook arrives at KOFFIA this year with his first film since 2016’s The Handmaiden. Following a man falling from a mountain peak to his death, detective Hae-joon(Park Hae-il) comes to meet the dead man’s wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei). Not showing any signs of being a grieving widow, the police consider her a suspect.
The full program and tickets are available on the KOFFIA website.
