Tag: Korean films

Lucky Chan-sil

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lucky-chan-sil_F_IOF8kDirector: Kim Cho-hee

Released in 2020.

This was a great choice because I nearly picked a Hong Sang-soo film instead and we all know how cheerful those are! Seriously though, I love Hong’s films but I guess I needed something a little more positive.

Nevertheless, Lucky Chan-sil isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It explores the difficulties Korean women face because of sexist societal expectations that prioritise marriage and childbearing over career. These expectations are internalised and this makes for an added sense of failure when 40-year-old film producer Chan-sil (Kim Mal-geum) finds herself suddenly jobless, single and childless following the death of the director she’s worked with for years. Has she thrown away the best years of her life for nothing? Should she have chosen marriage over a career?

Depressed and lonely, Chan-sil attempts to find new meaning in life and in herself. It’s actually what you’d expect of a Hong Sang-soo film, but without his requisite sleazy, sexist male characters.

Although I could feel Chan-sil’s despair, I wasn’t bogged down by it; nor was my sympathy for her complicated by anger at some selfish man treating her like dirt, and the frustration of witnessing her allow him to.

Instead, there are friends, old and new, realistically imperfect and frequently disappointing, but ultimately proving to be the key to surviving life’s trials and realising one’s worth.

My favourite character: the underwear-clad ghost of Leslie Cheung (played with perfect comic timing by Kim Jong-nim). He may truly be a ghost, or he may be a figment of Chan-sil’s imagination — a neat way of showing that what she ultimately needs is simply to forgive and accept herself.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

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virginDirector: Hong Sang-soo

Released in 2000.

Similar to the director’s Right Now, Wrong Then, two versions of the story are told, with details changed and/or added in the second version. Neither version throws much light on any of the characters. One man is cheating on his wife; the other is a two-timing bachelor whose initial interest in the female protagonist increases when he discovers that she’s a virgin 🙄 The female MC is the hardest to figure out. She appears merely inexperienced at first, but is subsequently revealed to be somewhat manipulative. Things at home aren’t exactly straightforward either — she seems to have an unconventional (to say the least) relationship with her brother, but her feelings about this are unclear. There are a few borderline rape scenes, but the men are (thankfully) weak pathetic fools who back off before things go too far. Still, it’s not comfortable to watch.

Hill of Freedom

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hillDirector: Hong Sang-soo

Released in 2014.

I watched two Hong Sang-soo films today. Both seem to stress that men can be utter shits and not much to look at, yet still find women to love them. The men in the two films are various kinds of yuck. Sorry, but I can’t find a better word to represent the way the male characters suck, hah. The main character in ‘Hill of Freedom’ might be said to be the best of the rotten bunch, but he too turns out to be a miserable weakling. As for the women, they are mostly a pathetic, desperate lot. The writer/director’s films tend to show people at their worst and I can’t stop watching them. Perhaps the utter awfulness of his characters reassures me that I am not alone in having to endure piece of shit humans, that there are just too many of them and so, impossible to avoid, and that I am not the only piece of shit in this world. We are a universal condition.

The Power of Kangwon Province

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Director: Hong Sang-soo

Released in 1998.

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There’s a poster for this film that has the tagline: ‘Love’s fleeting when most in need’. Whether it’s a translation from the tagline on a Korean poster or it was dreamt up by the distributors of the film’s release in the English-speaking world, it’s pretty stupid and meaningless. The characters in Kangwon Province may need love, but if they only have themselves to blame if love sidesteps their grubby grasp and runs for the hills. A more passive aggressive, cowardly, emotionally-stunted bunch of lost souls has never before been dreamt up! I’m beginning to realise that I’m never going to like the people in Hong Sang-soo’s films, but maybe their lives are just too familiar for me to stop watching.

On the Beach at Night Alone

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Beach

Director: Hong Sang-soo

Released in 2017.

I finally got around to watching this Korean film, by Hong Sang-soo, about a young actor trying to recover from her affair with a married director. I love such slice-of-life films, with lots of long conversations between characters, and silent scenes that encourage personal reflection.

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