Tag: Korea

Review: Peninsula

If ever there was a movie for the moment, it’s PENINSULA (반도). Yeon Sang-Ho’s film arrive on a wave of Korean zombie goodness, one started by his own prequel Train from Busan. It’s also the first Asian blockbuster to land in the middle of a global pandemic. It would be kind of ironic if irony hadn’t been cancelled for 2020.

The film opens with a brief prologue in which soldier Jung-Seok (Golden Slumber‘s Gang Dong-Won) escapes South Korea on an ill-fated boat. Four years later, he’s still awaiting refugee status in Hong Kong. So the crazy offer to go back to the Korean Peninsula with his brother-in-law Cheol-min (Kim Do-Yoon) to retrieve millions of dollars of US cash left in a truck is an appealing one.

It’s an old-fashioned zombie-heist, at least until things start to go wrong. Attacked by pseudo-militia Unit 631, led by Sergeant Hwang (Kim Min-jae) and Captain Seo (Koo Kyo-hwan), Cheol-min is captured and forced to compete in a zombie arena. Meanwhile, Jung-Seok is rescued by a duo of plucky fast-driving kids, and teams up with their mother Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun) to plan escape.

This is not Yeon’s first return to his zombie world, with the animated film Seoul Station greatly expanding his universe. Yet in PENINSULA, Yeon levels up his scope having learned a few new tricks in his superhero flick Psychokinesis. Tonally different from the singular forward momentum of Train to Busan, it’s like Yeon Sang-ho’s zombieverse skipped over Dawn of the Dead and went straight to Land of the Dead.

In fact, there’s a few different tones going on in this sequel. Starting as a gangster film, it travels through the heist genre, a family drama and into the action of an apocalyptic wasteland. In Mad Max terms, it’s equal parts Fury Road and Beyond Thunderdome, complete with the benefits and excesses of both of those flicks. Some may argue that it could be a sequel to literally any of the countless zombie flicks out there, which is a fair argument in a film that’s really only sequel in name only.

Gang Dong-Won is a charismatic lead, capably driving the primary plot. However, it’s also fair to say that the moustache twirling Koo Kyo-hwan and matriarch Lee Jung-hyun head up their own subplot casts, which includes Lee Re (Innocent Witness) as a kick-ass baby driver. The latter is also instrumental as director Yeon thunders towards the fast-driving finale, an amazing series of stunt set-pieces where every bit of the US$16 million budget (roughly double Busan‘s cost) is seen on screen.

The Zombie Wave shows no signs of letting up across South Korea with 2020 blockbuster #Alive, period drama Kingdom and TCO’s upcoming Night of the Undead series taking bites out of audiences. In a year where box offices have taken a hit, PENINSULA is a welcome way to ease back into theatre life with a mix of something familiar and fresh. Just make sure you do it from a safe physical distance.

2020 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Yeon Sang-Ho | WRITER: Yeon Sang-Ho | CAST: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Lee Re | DISTRIBUTOR: Magnum Films (AUS), New World Entertainment (Worldwide) | RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 August 2020 (AUS)

August 9, 2020
Fantasia Fest 2020: all the Asian cinema announced…so far

The 24th edition of Fantasia Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious genre festivals, has announced the first two waves of titles.

For a little bit of a curtain raiser (as we call it in the industry), it seemed like a good time to put Asia in Focus again and look at some of the highly anticipated titles from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and beyond.

Despite shifting online due to the global pandemic, the fest hasn’t slowed down its amazing selection of films. Streaming from 20 August to 2 September, hit up their website for tickets once the full program is announced on 6 August.

Labyrinth of Cinema 海辺の映画館キネマの玉手箱

Nobuhiko Obayashi, best known for Hausu (1977) and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983), defied all odds in making this film. Production started on this after he was diagnosed with stage-four terminal cancer, during which time he completed this and his previous film Hanagatami. That’s dedication. A love-letter to cinema, it’s a hell of a way to end a remarkable career. Read my full JAPAN CUTS review.

Tezuka’s Barbara

Macoto Tezka directs this adaptation of the 1970s manga by the legendary Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Black Jack, Phoenix). Starring former SMAP member Goro Inagaki and Fumi Nikaido (No Longer Human), it’s the master’s most sexually charged story. It’s also got Christopher Doyle on cinematography duties, so you know it’s going to look gorgeous.

I WeirDo

“Love in the Time of Corona” was how THR described this timely iPhone-shot Taiwanese film. Writer-director Liao Ming-yi follows an OCD couple who find their way of life tested by the world around them. The innovative film seems like a perfect offering at an online festival during a global pandemic.

Special Actors

Already a smash-hit at JAPAN CUTS this year, it’s the latest film from One Cut of the Dead director Shinichiro Ueda. Filled with a cast of mostly unknowns, expect meta twists on the genre film. Another cheeky insider look at the profession, this one has a little more heart and is (slightly) less bloody. You can read my earlier review here.

Beauty Water

This South Korean animated film from director Cho Kyung-hun is based on the 11-episode web comic series ‘Strange and Weird.’ It’s been described as an ugly duckling story about a woman who encounters water that allows her to change her appearance and stops at nothing to attain an ideal of perfected beauty. Yeah, good luck with that.

Crazy Samurai Musashi

Yûji Shimomura’s samurai epic is already gaining a fair bit of buzz in critic circles. Based on the most renowned sword battles of infamous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, perhaps most famously portrayed by Toshiro Mifune in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, the novelty is the single-take approach to the 400-plus group he’s opposing. If anybody is up to the task, it’s the Re:Born team of Shimomura and Tak Sakaguchi.

Detention

Based on a video game of the same name, here’s a film with a specific ready-made audience. A follow-up to director John Hsu’s VR short Your Spiritual Temple Sucks, this psychological horror blends genres and has already seen some box office success. Read my full review from TWFF.

Jesters: The Game Changers

It’s been almost a decade since Kim Joo-ho’s The Grand Heist, and the South Korean filmmaker’s return has been variously described as a Feudal Era ‘fake news’ comedy. It’s about a group of street entertainers paid to spread false rumours around town. So it’s a kind of proto-Facebook?

Life Untitled

Kana Yamada marks her feature directorial debut by adapting her own stage play. Focusng on women’s lives that collide with a Tokyo escort service, it stars Sairi Ito (who was recently seen in Netflix’s The Naked Director). At the recent JAPAN CUTS, the program compared it with the work of Kenji Mizoguchi – and that’s a mighty big compliment indeed!

Me and Me

Recognisable South Korean actor-director Jung Jin-young imagines a world where his character wakes up to find that his former life has disappeared, and everyone believes that he’s someone else. Don’t mistake this for Yesterday though. Speaking with Forbes, Jung explained that he didn’t take a traditional narrative path: “I deliberately eliminated detailed explanations…In zen dialogue, there is no such thing as an answer.”

My Punch-Drunk Boxer

Another contemporary South Korean film from an actor-director. Jung Hyuk-ki (Romance in Seoul) tells the story of former boxing champ Byeong-Goo (A Taxi Driver‘s Um Tae-Goo) intent on making a comeback despite his CTE diagnosis. It also stars the singular-named Hyeri (formerly of K-pop group Girls’ Day) in his support squad.

Project Dreams – How to Build Mazinger Z’s Hangar

Mazinger Z is one of the more recognisable anime robots in Japan, and this might just be the most novel spin on the influential 1970s cartoon. Probably the first film based on the Venn intersection of anime and a real life research paper, Tsutomu Hanabusa presents a fantasy adaptation of the techniques involved in building the famous underwater hangar in the real world. Plus: if there’s one thing we love, it’s a Japanese film with an incredibly long title.

Vertigo

Jeon Gye-soo’s film takes its title both literally and figuratively apparently! Seo-Young (Chun Woo-Hee) has climbed the corporate ladder in a South Korean company, but her high office floor make her physically dizzy. She then encounters a window cleaner (Extreme Job‘s Jeong Jae-Kwang) who dangles above the ground in this romantic drama.

The full lineup for the Fantasia festival’s 24th edition will be announced on 6 August on their website.

Read more coverage of Asian cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases in our dedicated section called Asia in Focus.

August 3, 2020
Cannes 2020: Asia in Focus in the Official Selection

The Cannes Film Festival didn’t happen this year. Yet while the show won’t go on, the films that would have filled the competitions will.

Festival president Pierre Lescure and general delegate Thierry Frémaux announced the 56 films that would have been playing as part of the 2020 Official Selection. Each film still gets to carry the 2020 Official Selection logo as they go on to other festivals.

Of course, as fans of Asian cinema, we know that Japan (Shoplifters) and South Korea (Parasite) are the reigning champs of the Palme d’Or. Would one of these films have been in the running for the top slot?

Here’s what we can still look forward to at some kind of festival in the near future.

ASA GA KURU (True Mothers) 朝が来る

Naomi Kawase (Japan) – 2h20

It’s been an odd year for Kawase (Radiance, Vision), who would have been helming the Seoul-Tokyo 2020 Official Film in a non-pandemic world. Yet we still get to see her narrative feature, titled Comes Morning in Japanese and based on the novel of the same name by Mizuki Tsujimura. It stars Hiromi Nagasaku, Aju Makita, Arata Iura, Ren Komai, Miyoko Asada and Taketo Tanaka and should be on the must-see list of every Japanese film fan.

THE REAL THING 本気のしるし

Kôji Fukada (Japan) – 3h48

Fukada last three films – Sayonara (2015), Harmonium (2016) and A Girl Missing (2019) – have all been festival favourites. This one follows Kuzumichi Tsuji (Win Morisaki) who is labelled a “good man” having two casual by bored relationships with his coworkers. He then meets Ukiyo (Kaho Tsuchimura), whose “troublesome nature” draws him into the underworld.

AYA TO MAJO (Earwig and the Witch)

Gorô Miyazaki (Japan) – 1h22

It’s been almost a decade since Gorô Miyazaki last feature, From Up on Poppy Hill. Following the TV series Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter, he’s returning with an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ (Howl’s Moving Castle). It’s Studio Ghibli‘s first all-CG animated film, so all eyes will be on this.

HEAVEN: TO THE LAND OF HAPPINESS

Im Sang-Soo (Korea)

Im’s first film in five years, and his third invite to Cannes following The Housemaid and The Taste of Money, actors Choi Min-sik and Park Hae-il feature as prisoner 203 and Nam-sik who meet by chance and make one last desperate attempt at freedom and happiness.

PENINSULA 반도

Yeon Sang-Ho (Korea)

Arguably the most anticipated Korean film of the year. The sequel to Train to Busan has been rumoured for a Hollywood remake, but series originator Yeon (who made the animated side-story Seoul Station in the intermin) is getting in on the sequel action first. Cast includes Kang Dong Won, Lee Jung Hyun, Lee Re, Kwon Hae Hyo, Kim Min Jae and Goo Kyo Hwan. Be excited.

READ MORE: 20 Asia films to watch in 2020

INTO THE WIND ( Running with the Wind )

Wei Shujun (China)

This is another film we were excited about back when listing our top picks for 2020. Filmmaker Wei Shujun made a promising debut with the much lauded On the Border short film when it debuted at Cannes in 2018. Listed as one of China’s hottest indie directors, his first feature is one to watch. Previously billed on most sources as Ya Me Feng Zhong (野马分鬃), the title would appear to be derived from a basic Tai Chi pose. With a script co-written with On the Border collaborator Gao Linyang, the cast is listed as Tong Lin Kai, Zheng Ying Chen, Xiaomu Wang, and You Zhou.

SEPTET: THE STORY OF HONG KONG

Ann Hui, Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo-Ping and Patrick Tam (Hong Kong)

Look at that list of filmmakers! Five years ago, this was announced as Eight and a Half with John Woo attached. Now he’s about the only person from the who’s who of Hong Kong cinema not attached to this series of vignettes that contemplates the city-state and its future.

June 4, 2020
Review: Time to Hunt

There’s any number of reasons why this action heist film is worth checking out. In addition to being director Yoon Sung-hyun’s first feature since 2011’s Bleak Night, the line-up of Lee Je-hoon, Ahn Jae-hong, Choi Woo-shik and Park Jung-min is a veritable who’s who of contemporary Korean cinema.

Yet it’s also significant as one of the first big films out of South Korea this year to have its global debut on Netflix after repeated delays due to the current pandemic. Following it’s premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, it only took an injunction and a few bits of legal wrangling for TIME TO HUNT (사냥의 시간) to hit our digital channels as a quiet blockbuster.

Ostensibly set in a dystopian future, Jun-seok (Lee) emerges from a three year prison stint after a botched job to find the won has crashed and his profits rendered worthless. So it’s one last job, which happens to be the mob-run gambling houses. Naturally, the gangs are none too happy about this, so they send killer Han (Park Hae-soo) to retrieve their stuff.

Yoon’s script starts well enough, thoroughly establishing these characters in an environment where the heist is not the primary push. Indeed, while it goes quickly through the machinations of heist planning – from a gun selection montage to dreams of tropical islands – it’s refreshing to see a genre flick that at least cares a little about its humans.

Yet it also does virtually nothing with the dystopian setting. There’s some digital iconography during the opening sequences to establish the future, and some later protests set the film against a background of civil unrest. For the most part, Yoon just relies on the tropes of the ‘one last haul’ genre that could be easily transplanted into any time or place.

It’s a technically beautiful action film though, with Lim Won-geun’s red-filtered photography full of individually perfect shots. This more than anything gives Yoon’s film the sense that it’s not part of our contemporary world and makes for a striking contrast against the muted greys and blues of the city. There’s a few other flourishes too, including a dream sequence involving fire crackers, that speak more to the art of the piece than the plot-driven construction.

It all culminates in an extended 30-minute action sequence that is captivating from beginning to end. As such, TIME TO HUNT may not revolutionise the way you think about heist cinema, but refines some of its most familiar aspects.

2020 | South Korea| DIRECTOR: Yoon Sung-hyun | WRITER: Yoon Sung-hyun | CAST: Lee Je-hoon, Ahn Jae-hong, Choi Woo-shik, Park Jung-min, Park Hae-soo | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix (Global) | RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 23 April 2020 (Global)

April 26, 2020
Review: Money

What is it that fascinates us about people getting rich by skirting the law? From Wall Street to The Wolf of Wall Street, money talks to audiences. MONEY (돈) is the Korean take on the Icarus story, as yet another wide-eyed newbie tries to fly too close to the sun on wings made of multi-coloured won.

The Bud Fox of the film is Il-Hyun (Ryu Joon-Yeol), a young broker who makes a terrible mistake early in the piece. He gets a lifeline from the mysterious Beonhopyo (Yoo Ji-Tae), or “Ticket,” who ropes him into a stock market scheme. His bad luck turns and he is suddenly getting all the big commissions.

Much of the first half of the film follows his spectacular rise in the world, complete with the obligatory buying of things, high-priced apartment settings, and fast living. (If it was set in Australia, smashed avocado would also be purchased). Things take a turn towards thriller territory, and for Il-Hyun, when Financial Supervisory Service officer Han Ji-Cheol (Jo Woo-Jin) starts sniffing around the trail that the broker is leaving behind.

MONEY is the debut feature for director Park Noo-Ri, although she has finely honed her visual craft as an assistant director alongside Ryoo Seung-Wan (The Unjust, The Berlin File) and Han Dong-Wook (Man in Love). Working with cinematographer Hong Jae-Sik (A Melody to Remember), she creates a visually rich palette, filled with all of the totems of the 21st century. At one point, Il-Hyun looks around the street and spots all the prices of things appearing like a cross between AR and an IKEA catalogue.

Much of the appeal of the film comes from its charismatic leads. Fresh off a string of hits, Ryu Joon-Yeol (Believer, Little Forest, A Taxi Driver) manages to stay likeable despite playing a character who skims a thin line between morality and criminality. The popular Yoo Ji-Tae (The Swindlers) is perfectly cast as the ostensible villain of the piece, although who is to say he is any more upstanding than anybody who is willing to gamble the money of other people for personal profit?

MONEY may not buy you love, but it definitely buys you a good time for a short spell. While the shopfront may feel familiar, and no new ground is broken along the way, there’s a satisfying conclusion and a justified comeuppance. Who knows, maybe director Park will return in 20 years with Money 2: Money Never Sleeps.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Park Noo-Ri | WRITERS: Park Noo-Ri | CAST: Ryu Jun-yeol, Yoo Ji-tae, Jo Woo-jin | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 30, 2019
Review: Hotel By the River

If you are a follower of Hong Sang-soo’s films, you probably have a firm idea what you’re getting into. His plainly shot features, with loose plotting and semi-autobiographical leanings, will feature a familiar cast drinking, sleeping, and walking around public places.

So, depending on your point of view, HOTEL BY THE RIVER (강변 호텔, or more literally Gangbyun Hotel) is either peak Hong or much of the same. Self-aware from the opening frame, a monotone voice reads the credits and shooting dates like it’s the audio descriptive version of the Wiki summary. For new initiates, it’s the first sign of his cheeky sense of humour and dialogue with the viewer.

As with Hong’s previous films, the plotting is simplicity itself. Of course, appearances are deceiving and relationships are not what they seem. Convinced that he’s dying without any evidence to support this, poet Ko Young-hwan (Gi Ju-bong) invites his sons (Kwon Hae-hyo and Yu Jun-sang) to his temporary home in a hotel by shores of the wintry Han River. Their time together occasionally intersects with that of A-Reum (Kim Min-Hee), a woman who has been betrayed by the man she lived with and has called her best friend Yeon-Joo (Song Seon-Mi) for support.

From the moment Hong has established his sense of place, he starts messing with our notion of time and distance. Near misses between characters and long waiting times for people to arrive aren’t simply trademarks but are used here to cocoon us completely in this insular little conclave. He even brushes against magical realism, with snow appearing after everyone nods off to sleep for a short time, although never delves completely into that space.

Comedy comes from the most unexpected places, such as social manners or over polite strings of “thank yous,” along with the autograph seeking hotel clerk. At other times, Hong is answering critics and speaking directly to viewers who are in on the joke. “He doesn’t appeal to the masses,” comments one of the two women discussing Yu Jun-Sang’s filmmaker character. “Sounds boring,” quips the other.

Yet it’s with the character of Ko Young-hwan, taking on the more traditional Hong-proxy role, that leads to moments of rare beauty and heartbreak. There’s a moment in the back half of the film that Ko reads a poem over the soft-focus vision of a young man at a gas station, giving us one of Hong most elegant moments amidst his lo-fi handheld leanings. It’s a visual foreshadow for the heart-wrenching final moments, some that elegantly bring several threads full circle in a far stronger way than his earlier sly winks.

Like the titular river, audiences will undoubtedly find themselves on one side or the other. A film that deals with duality and dreams as abstractly as a David Lynch outing, and filled with equal parts subtle allegory and plain-faced realism, this is classic Hong Sang-soo.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Hong Sang-soo | WRITERS: Hong Sang-soo | CAST: Gi Ju-bong, Kim Min-hee, Kwon Hae-hyo, Song Seon-Mi, Yu Jun-sang | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 29, 2019
Review: Ongals

When Ongals performed at some Australian comedy festivals a few years ago, much of press concentrated on them being one of the biggest acts you’ve never heard of. If you’re up to this sentence, you have now heard of them.

The nonverbal comedy team has travelled the world since 2007, but their biggest goal is to have their own show in Las Vegas. Cha In-pyo and Jeon Hae-lim’s documentary traces the group’s attempts to get there, chronicling one team member’s battle with cancer and the addition of a foreigner who doesn’t quite gel with the unit along the way.

The film begins with the roar of a crowd, followed by four grown men dressed as babies stepping onto a stage. If you aren’t already familiar with the group, you kind of get a sense of what their act is about through osmosis: beat boxing, juggling, and fart jokes seem to play some role in their brand of comedy. We never see any of it for long, but that’s not really where Cha and Jeon want us to concentrate.

What emerges is a family saga about a tight knit group from the perspective of outsiders. The main person in the latter camp is Tyler, an American performer who doesn’t quite seem to have the same devotion to the cause as the rest of the troupe. While language doesn’t prove to be a barrier, given the physical nature of their performance, Tyler is depicted as being less interested in being an Ongal than he does in furthering his career as an actor. Everybody hates a tourist, Tyler.

The rest of the content is considered with a light touch, including Ongal member Suwon’s ongoing battle with cancer. The filmmakers randomly cut back to him for updates, mostly so that there is more of an emotional impact to the kind of resolution that emerges in the end. It’s here that we get more of a sense of how much these guys have sacrificed to get where they are. “We had nothing to lose,” comments one member. “So we had nothing to fear.”

ONGALS (옹알스) is a bit like the act itself, or at least the little we see of it. It never gets terribly deep, but it has a broad appeal and a genuine heart in its soft. While there isn’t really a conclusion to the story, that is a positive outcome for this ragtag group. As we watch the hospitalised Suwon and his fellow Ongals performing for sick kids in a hospital, we realise this is not just the story of a comedy act, but a group of nice people who will never stop fighting.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Cha In-pyo and Jeon Hae-lim | WRITERS: Cha In-pyo, Jeon Hae-lim | CAST: Chae Kyung-sun, Cho Jun-woo, Tyler Dash White | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 29, 2019
Review: Innocent Witness

Autism in South Korea is not an easy topic to tackle. While the country has one of the more prevalent rates of diagnoses, numerous sources speak to the massive social stigma attached to the developmental disorder. INNOCENT WITNESS (증인) attempts to tackle this within the construct of a courtroom drama with surprisingly strong results.

Struggling lawyer Soon-Ho (Jung Woo-Sung) takes on a seemingly hopeless defence case of a woman accused of murdering an old man. The only witness to the crime is a Ji-Woo (Kim Hyang-Gi), a schoolgirl with autism. As the investigation continues, Soon-Ho has his assumptions tested and learns something about her condition in the process.

While the actual defence plot may leap over the bounds of believability, mostly because the defence case never feels like it is ever on terribly solid ground to begin with, the strength of Moon Ji-Won and Lee Han’s (A Melody to Remember) screenplay lays in the interplay between the two leads. The film is careful to take its time to study Ji-Woo’s intelligence and logical responses, along with her audio/visual sensitivities.

This is all supported by an excellent performance from the young actor Kim Hyang-Gi, who has most recently starred in a prominent role in the Along with the Gods series. Although Ji-Woo is portrayed as being on one of the more extreme ends of the spectrum, playing up the physicality of flat speech of the disorder, there is a studied subtlety to her performance that is exhibited in non-verbal responses to Soon-Ho’s questioning.

The final act is primarily a courtroom sequence that relies on some familiar tropes, and it’s here that the film comes closest to exploiting the disorder. Yet here the script repositions autism as a strength, exposing the unconscious prejudices on both sides of the argument. While some of this seems to suggest that humanity and the legal system can’t coexist, here the film is arguably at its most didactic.

INNOCENT WITNESS has been largely praised for its sensitive treatment of autism on screen, and this is because it has a point to be made. If the murder plot seems less than fleshed out, it’s because the real trial represents a microcosm of the public stigma that is still said to exist within the film’s native audience. Nevertheless, backed by impressive performances from the leads, this is still a film that doesn’t sacrifice its pointed message or its entertainment value.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Lee Han | WRITERS: Moon Ji-Won, Lee Han | CAST: Jung Woo-Sung, Kim Hyang-Gi, Park Geun-Hyung, Yum Hye-Ran | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 129 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 28, 2019
Review: MAL-MO-E: The Secret Mission

There have been quite a few Korean films set during the Japanese occupation in the last few years, from The Age of Shadows to this year’s A Resistance. It is, after all, the 100^th anniversary of the 1^st March Independence Protests that underpin so much of Korea’s modern history. MAL-MO-E: THE SECRET MISSION (말모이) is about a very specific slice of that era and the importance of language to cultural identity.

The film opens in 1933, as a group smuggles the titular dictionary across the country. Flash forward to the 1940s, where Japanese occupiers have forbidden Koreans from speaking their own language. After ex-con Pan-Soo (Yoo Hae-Jin) tries to pick the wrong pocket, he becomes involved with Ryoo Jung-Hwan (Yoon Kye-Sang), a man who is secretly trying to publish a Korean dictionary with the Korean Language Society.

The plot sounds like it might be ripped straight from the pages of a Dan Brown novel, although the execution couldn’t be further from that. A low-key drama that about identity not conspiracy, the emphasis here is not on the individual moments of tension – although there are a number of these, especially in the final act – but on the vital importance of language to the notion of individual and national sovereignty.

“Words reflect the spirit,” we are repeatedly told, although writer/director Eom Yu-na doesn’t necessarily try to do anything outrageously twisty with them. Instead she uses the illiterate character of Pan-Soo to convey the transformative nature of literacy in one’s own language. Like her occasionally heavy-handed screenplay to A Taxi Driver, the non-believer slowly having his perceptions changed is core to the success of this representation.

Yoo Hae-Jin (The Battle: Roar to Victory, Intimate Strangers) is in his element here as the ostensible lead, a semi-comic performance that relies partly on his well-timed buffoonery and natural charm. Yoon Kye-sang is a foil as academic with a well-placed stick who learns the value of the common touch though Pan-Soo’s homespun aphorisms.

In 1942 there were 33 arrests and 2 deaths in custody related to the dictionary project. MAL-MO-E might not revolutionise the way we look at this era of Korean history, but it does show that revolutions don’t have to be large-scale to be impactful. Cinema fans should also enjoy some of the references to period films, with posters and clips peppered throughout. While Eom Yu-na may overstate the case a little, it’s nevertheless a broad brushstroke that should have you rushing out to do a masters in linguistics or archival practices.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Eom Yu-na | WRITERS: Eom Yu-na | CAST: Yoo Hae-jin, Yoon Kye-sang | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 135 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 26, 2019
Review: A Resistance

Yu Gwan-sun is such an important figure in Korea’s history, she is known as the nation’s “Joan of Arc” in some circles. An organiser of the March 1st Movement against Japanese colonial occupation, her steadfast refusal to name collaborators or submit to the Japanese threats is more impressive for her only being 17 at the time of her death.

The story of Yu Gwan-sun has (understandably) been told four times before in Korean cinema, many of which were directed by Yun Bong-chun. In tackling this story again, director Joe Min-ho (who shot A Million here in Australia) stated that he didn’t want to make another film about the icon so much as a 17-year-old girl and her beliefs.

In this film’s narrative, Yu Gwan-Sun (portrayed by Ko Ah-Sung, Right Now, Wrong Then) is sent to Seodaemun Prison where she bonds with fellow prisoners (Kim Ye-Eun, Kim Sae-Byuk, and Jeong Ha-Dam among others), refutes the powers that be, and inspires further sedition. It’s a straightforward take, both reverential of its subject while trying to humanise her.

Taking the interesting stylistic approach of shooting in start black and white, a first for the filmmaker, colour footage is reserved only for flashback sequences. In this way, the entire imprisonment is staged as a kind of death, filled with the dreary repetition of life on the inside and grim moments of torture and withholding designed to break the spirits of the prisoners.

There is a fair bit of harsh subject matter in that time though. Yu Gwan-sun is seen to be stripped, beaten, degraded, and tortured. Director Joe does attempt to posit this within a shared sisterhood, a solidarity that inspires other prisoners and people on the outside. If the intention was to not cast her as a martyr, then it is a shame that more time wasn’t spent on developing the character arcs of the women around her. As it stands, we largely learn of Yu Gwan-Sun outside the prison from a handful of colour snippets of her interacting with her family. In other scenes, she is beaten and tortured as a kind of petit Christ figure.

The other theme that rises out of the film is that of collaboration, primarily centred on “Nishida,” a Korean man who joins the Japanese armed forces as a means of advancing his station. Critic Russell Edwards, who moderated a Q&A with the filmmaker and stars at the Korean Film Festival in Australia, pointed to this being a recurring them in recent Korean cinema, citing Battleship Island (2017) as an example. In fact, at the time of writing this review, South Korea has cancelled an intelligence sharing pact with Japan over a trade dispute, and the roots of this fracture arguably trace their way back to their shared history.

So, while A RESISTANCE (항거:유관순 이야기) may not necessarily add anything new to the well-established legend, it’s unquestionably a timely picture. Indeed, younger viewers and foreigners who weren’t raised on the story will no doubt gain a new understanding for Korea’s struggle for independence.

2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Joe Min-ho | WRITERS: Joe Min-ho | CAST: Go Ah-sung, Kim Sae-byuk, Kim Ye-eun, Jeong Ha-dam, Ryu Kyung-soo | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)

August 24, 2019