Tag: Korea

Review: Somebody

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)

June 11, 2025
Review: What Does That Nature Say to You

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)

June 10, 2025
Review: Yadang: The Snitch

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)

April 25, 2025
Review: Revelations

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.

2025 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Yeon Sang-ho | WRITER: Yeon Sang-ho | CAST: Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyun-been, Shin Min-jae, Moon Joo-yeon | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix | RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 March 2025

March 24, 2025
Review: In Water

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)

June 22, 2023
Review: Cobweb

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)

June 20, 2023
KOFFIA 2022: 5 films to watch at the Korean Film Festival in Australia

Our friends at the Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) are back with a massive program for 2022!

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.

August 7, 2022
Review: Next Sohee [Fantasia 2022]

Films about the exploitation of workers in a gig economy have been on the rise over the last few years, from Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You (2019) to documentary The Gig Is Up (2021). Yet that’s only a reflection of the very real human cost that an unrestrained free market has had on the mental and physical health of workers.

NEXT SOHEE (다음 소희) is a film of two halves. In the first, we watch the wheels of capitalism grind the titular player down. When we meet the titular Sohee (Kim Si-eun), a high school student contracted to work at a call centre, she is a fiercely independent would-be dancer. Yet the conditions are punishing, with even her manager succumbing to the pressures of the job.

When a new manager targets Sohee for the poor performance of the branch, Sohee is pushed the point of breaking — and labelled unhinged when she does finally snap. When tragedy occurs, a detective is sent to investigate the situation, finding an environment where guilt, public shaming and exploitative contracts are all managed under the guise of legal mechanisms.

From this point onwards, NEXT SOHEE becomes something else entirely, shifting from drama to a film more akin to a police procedural. As Bae Donna’s cop uncovers more information on the broader system, she is pinged from office to office looking for answers. You might be forgiven for thinking you’ve wandered into Law & Order: Labour Practices Unit.

The film covers some (all too) familiar ground, although not familiar enough to result in lasting change it would seem. It mostly works thanks to the presence of the two leads, each of whom do an excellent job in holding up their respective halves. Kim, known primarily for her roles on Korean television, steps confidently into a leading feature role. Naturally, the internationally recognised Bae Donna (Cloud Atlas, Broker) brings a weight to the second half of the film, as she cooly glides through a corporate crime scene.

If anything, director July Jung doesn’t go far enough in condemning a system that allows people like the fictional Sohee to slip through the cracks. Due to the film’s construct, one would be forgiven for thinking that there’s a few bad apples in the bunch. Yet the sad truth is that major multi-billion dollar corporations continue to resist reform, and it’s only a matter of time before we see the real next Sohee.

2022 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: July Jung | WRITERS: July Jung | CAST: Bae Doona, Kim Si-eun, Kim Woo-kyum | DISTRIBUTOR: Solaire Partners, Fantasia Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 135 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 14 July – 3 August 2022 (Fantasia)

August 6, 2022
Review: Special Delivery [Fantasia 2022]

Filmmaker Park Dae-min may not be a household name for international audiences yet, but SPECIAL DELIVERY (특송) could change that. Park’s third feature, following Seondal: The Man Who Sells the River (2016) and Private Eye (2009), is a superior South Korean action thriller that kicks off with some gnarly car chases that could ram Baby Driver off the road.

The sequence introduces us to Eun-Ha (Park So-Dam), a driver working for the shady Baek (Kim Eui-Sung). Her particular set of skills are in 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 (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.

SPECIAL DELIVERY wears its influences clearly on its sleeves: Edgar Wright’s aforementioned Baby Driver is on one arm and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive runs down the other. Still, the mostly familiar plotting manages to work thanks to the presence of Park So-dam, reteaming with young Parasite co-star Jung Hyeon-jun for an effective if unlikely buddy actioner. Park, who more recently appeared in the effectively low-key Fukuoka, gets to flex her action chops. She makes a convincing argument that she should be fronting more action films both in South Korea and around the globe.

Park Dae-Min’s script occasionally gets a little tangled in some side-plotting, not least of which is the late introduction of a crooked cop and some revelations about Eun-Ha’s past. It’s not a major issue, it’s just that SPECIAL DELIVERY works best when the road between A and B is more or less a straight line.

All that aside, Park Dae-min maintains the initial momentum for most of the film’s tidy running time, culminating in a terrific vehicular face-off in a parking garage. It’s a throwback to the kind of South Korea action film we would have devoured on DVD in the early 2000s before smugly recommending it to friends who thought they’d seen everything. So, jump in the passenger seat as soon as you can, as this is definitely a contender for one of the top South Korean thrills of 2022.

2022 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Park Dae-Min | WRITERS: Park Dae-Min | CAST: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun | DISTRIBUTOR: Next Entertainment World, Fantasia Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 14 July – 3 August 2022 (Fantasia)

July 22, 2022
Review: Love and Leashes

What to make of LOVE AND LEASHES (모럴센스), the third feature from director Park Hyun-jin? A romantic film released on Netflix globally to coincide with Valentine’s Day 2022, it combines all the tropes of the formula with a strangely nuanced exploration of BDSM. In doing so, it might be South Korea’s first femdom rom-com.

Based on the webtoon Moral Sense by Gyeoul, it focuses on media and communications team member Ji-woo (singer and actor Seohyun). Struggling with the casual misogyny of her boss (Seo Hyun-woo), she meets new recruit Ji-hoo (Lee Jun-young). While supporting her opinions, she discovers Ji-woo’s secret BDSM desires when she mistakenly opens a package intended for him.

As the lightly plotted narrative unfurls, Ji-woo becomes more assertive in areas outside of their relationship. Director Park visually signals her transformation by alternating his montages from being bathed in blue to a more sensuous red light. “A dom must know how to play without toys,” a wizened Ji-woo opines, at least before secrets are exposed and old flames reappear.

Yet make no mistake: Park never laughs at these characters, instead bringing us a surprisingly tender and layered depiction of a master-submissive relationship. The focus is never on the sex either, although there are some lightly erotic moments that stay on the cleaner side of the sheets. The tone ultimately lands on mildly suggestive (or ‘adult themes’ as the ratings might say), making it a rare kink-positive exploration of how a relationship changes over time.

Fans of Seohyun will enjoy seeing her get her dom on, grasping the lead in this film much as her character takes the strap of Ji-hoo’s leash. Likewise, others may just relish the opportunity to see Lee Jun-young at the pointy end of a dog collar, but he’s clearly having a ball with the character. They both are really, and there’s a particular fun scene set in the office after hours that lets them both cut loose for a while.

LOVE AND LEASHES lands on an odd note, but an essentially good natured one. Indeed, if you don’t take it literally, there’s progressive commentary to be found in there about everything from workplace harassment to victim shaming. Even with the BDSM shopfront, it’s a film about the unique love one finds if they open themselves up to new opportunities – even if you might take a different path to this would-be couple.

2022 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Park Hyun-jin | WRITERS: Lee Da-hye, Park Hyun-jin | CAST: Seohyun, Lee Jun-young | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 February 2022 (AUS)

March 9, 2022