The Reel Bits

Tag: Kim Hae-sook

  • Review: Herstory

    Review: Herstory

    Inspired by the ‘Gwanbu Trial’ during the 1990s, HERSTORY (허스토리) follows the struggles of a group of Korean ‘comfort women’ who attempted to attain visibility and an admission of responsibility from the Japanese government. Based on this emotionally fraught story, Min Kyu-Dong’s (The Treacherous, Horror Stories series) film takes place over 6 years, chronicling the 23 trials as the legal battles and fierce debate that surrounded this issue.

    ‘Comfort women’ is of course the euphemism used for the women forced into sex slavery in the Japanese occupied territories during the Second World War. Last year’s documentary Twenty-Two dealt with the surviving Chinese women who have had to live with this legacy. Min’s fictionalised account of the Korean group action is no less emotionally charged, albeit sometimes deliberately so. 

    Min (with co-writers Jung Gyeo-woon and Seo Hye-rim-I) structures his story around Busan-based travel agent Moon Jung-Sook (Kim Hee-Ae), who in 1991 is accused of running prostitution tours thanks to a dodgy manager. During her business’ closure, she rallies her Women’s Association to start a local call centre for the group of ‘grannies’ who want to make a case against Japan. During the process, she discovers that her housekeeper Bae Jung-Kil (Kim Hae-Sook) was once a Japanese sex slave. Taking it personally, she and Attorney Lee Sang-Il (Kim Joon-Han) begin a process that takes over a decade to see through.

    Herstory (허스토리)

    The Gwabnu Trials were a massively complicated constitutional law matter couched in a history of intergovernmental negotiations that began in 1951. For decades, Japan denied any wrongdoing: in 2007 Shinzō Abe claimed there was no evidence that the Japanese military had used sex slaves. By reducing it to a courtroom drama, Min reminds us of this emotional animosity between nations, and how divisive it remains.

    Kim Hee-Ae is fierce as the nominal lead, a lightning rod in the middle of some fine performances from a mixture of veterans. Kim Hae-Sook (Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds) has some very powerful moments, especially breaking down during courtroom speeches, and balancing some difficult truths about her past. Moon Sook (Keys To The Heart) lays herself bare as another ‘granny.’ Lee Yong-Nyeo (Microhabitat) is as nutty as a fruitbat, and while it is an excellent performance, the writing of it steers a little too close to archetype for the film’s own good.

    HERSTORY may not be the final word on the Gwanbu Trial, or the broader implications of national moral culpability. In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 that Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye reached a formal agreement on the matter. Indeed, recent global border policies around the world remind us that universal human rights appear to be optional depending on who the regime is. If nothing else, films like this hopefully bring us one step close to it never happening again.

    [stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]Asia in Focus2018 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Min Kyu-Dong | WRITERS: Jung Gyeo-woon, Min Kyu-Dong, Seo Hye-rim-I | CAST: Kim Hee-Ae, Kim Hae-Sook, Ye Soo-Jung, Moon Sook, Lee Yong-Nyeo | DISTRIBUTOR: Cine Asia (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 July 2018 (AUS)[/stextbox]

  • CineAsia Oz tells ‘Herstory’ in July, adds new trailer

    CineAsia Oz tells ‘Herstory’ in July, adds new trailer

    The fight for justice takes centre stage in HERSTORY (허스토리), a new Korean drama that is set for an Australian and New Zealand release on 26 July 2018 from CineAsia Oz.

    Inspired by the ‘Gwanbu Trial’ of the early 1990s, it follows the struggles of 10 Korean ‘comfort women’ who attempted to attain visibility and  an admission of responsibility from the Japanese government. The film takes place over 6 years and 23 trials as the legal battles are met with aggression and empathy on all sides of the debate.

    Directed by Min Kyu-Dong (The Treacherous, Horror Stories series), it stars Kim Hee-Ae (The Vanished), Kim Hae-Sook (Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds), Ye Soo-Jung (Train to Busan, Psychokinesis), Moon Sook (Keys To The Heart), and Lee Yong-Nyeo (The Handmaiden). 

    Set for release in South Korea in June 2018, it will make an interesting narrative accompaniment to the documentary Twenty-Two that was released late last year, following the 22 surviving Chinese women who were forced into sex slavery during the Japanese occupation of World War II.

  • SFF 2016 Review: The Handmaiden

    SFF 2016 Review: The Handmaiden

    The Handmaiden posterOften over-the-top, but also gorgeously shot and erotic to the point of parody. In other words, it’s the latest masterpiece from Park Chan-wook.

    THE HANDMAIDEN has one of the most threatening and inventive uses of an octopus since Oldboy. This is unsurprising given that South Korean director Park Chan-wook is the unique voice behind both, delivering his first feature film since 2013’s Stoker. Adapting Welsh writer Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, previously brought to screen as a BBC series set in its native Victorian England, Park effortlessly shifts the setting to 1930s colonial Korea in a version that is no less inventive, sexy or aware of its own turning cogs.

    The first thing that will strike audiences about THE HANDMAIDEN is just how unreal the colours look. Before we know a thing about plotting or characters, Park and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon establish the hyperreality of the piece, a necessity as they continue to push the narrative into more unbelievable places. Con man Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) recruits street pickpocket Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) to work at the estate of the mysterious heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) in an attempt to take her fortune. Yet as Sook-hee and Hideko grow closer, best laid plans take an interesting turn. Divided into three distinct chapters, the film is constantly shifting perspectives, partly to obfuscate the truth, but also to translate something distinct English into a piece that is mostly Park’s.

    Excess is the name of the game in Park’s adaptation, true of many of his works, here shifting it from modern violence to sexual encounters. From the first glimpse of the manor house that forms the primary location of the film, a blend of an English Victorian opulence and Japanese elegance, iconography from both cultures pours off the screen. What amounts to a lavish ‘heist’ or ‘sting’ structure doesn’t fall to the rapid-fire editing of the genre, replaced instead with long lingering takes that allow the viewer to soak in the mise-en-scène. When Sook-hee first meets the obsessive book collector (Cho Jin-woong) that keeps Hideko captive, there’s an impressive tracking shot that pushes past a guardian ‘snake’ as the camera envelops the entire space. This slavish attention to the details of the production design would undermine the story, if not for the sense that Park and his crew have placed each thread there deliberately.

    The Handmaiden

    All of which might just be a well-dressed delivery capsule for the intensely erotic and equally excessive lesbian sex scenes that commence between Sook-hee and Hideko in the second and third chapters, ones that would take on a pay-per-view porn quality were they not also highly aware of their own farce. What will undoubtedly be referred to universally as the prolonged “scissoring scene” is an extended vision of two writhing female bodies exploring each other, spouting incredulous dialogue that could have be ripped from a paperback piece of purple prose, except it’s so (literally) tongue in cheek that it’s impossible to take it seriously, and nor does Park seem to want us to. Park even returns to the sequence from a different point of view in the third act, an even more heightened version of the original scene, and it’s here we realise how important the traditional roles that Kim Tae-ri and Kim Min-hee have been playing. The innocent and mysteriously repressed archetypes have been hustling the audience, just as much as their intended targets of the sting.

    THE HANDMAIDEN straddles the fine line between pointed satire and male fantasy, but also embraces its comic outlandishness at every opportunity. While diverging from Sarah Waters’ setting and plot at various key points, Park’s relocation of the film to something akin to home territory ensures that commentary on class structures and female empowerment remain firmly intact in the translation. So too does Park’s penchant for a ripping vengeance yarn, but the focus remains wholly on the individuals at the heart of the story. At times completely insane, THE HANDMAIDEN is a true cinematic experience.

    2016 | South Korea | DIR: Park Chan-wook | WRITERS: Chung Seo-kyung, Park Chan-wook, adapted from the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters | CAST: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook, Moon So-ri | DISTRIBUTOR: DreamWest | RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes | RATING: ★★★★½ (9/10)