Release date: November 2012
The first segment of this
omnibus, “Circle Line”, refers to the subway line that circles Seoul non-stop.
Sang-woo has lost his job but, rather than tell his wife and teen-aged
daughter, he just goes out dressed for work and rides the circle line all day.
His wife is in the last month of a late-in-life pregnancy and in some danger.
His daughter wants a new ipad as it is her dad’s “bonus day”. Sang-woo tangles
with a beggar woman who he believes is scamming people. A visual parable of the
meaninglessness of modern life as Sang-woo endlessly circles the city, but the
film never quite engages. My take: 1 star
“Star Shaped Stain”: Families
prepare for a one-year memorial service, their children having all died in a
horrific kindergarten summer-camp fire. Near the site of the camp, an
unbalanced store owner describes seeing one child fleeing the fire alive,
setting off a hysterical reaction, everyone hoping that perhaps their child
escaped death. One mother in particular hopes against hope that her daughter
survived. A pretty pointless film. My take: 1 star
“E.D. 571”: It is the year 2030,
Kim, a successful CEO comes home to find a very freaky thirteen-year-old girl
waiting on her doorstep. The girl tells of being a test-tube baby, abandoned
now by her divorced parents, and a skilled hacker. She has ferreted out the
information that Kim is her biological mother, that Kim sold her own ova,
illegally, while working her way through college, and the girl is here to
blackmail Kim with this information. Has she backed Kim into an impossibly
tight corner? It turns out, after all, that the apple has not fallen very far
from the tree. Fabulous use of suspense and plot development. My take: 5 stars
“In Good Company”: Done in an
interesting docudrama/flashback style, this segment highlights the problems
facing the modern woman, who must both work and be responsible for her children.
The editor of the in-house journal for a publishing company, Chulwoo is ordered
to lay off a pregnant colleague, Ji-won. Meanwhile his own wife is about to go
into labor but she cannot leave her job at a preschool. The other workers band
together to protest Ji-won’s dismissal, knowing one day they will be in the
same situation. Nothing goes well that day. My take: 5 stars
The four stories
that make up this omnibus are all vaguely about families and stuff that happens
to them: a death in the family, a breadwinner laid off, and so on. The first
two filmmakers have adopted the spaghetti-on-the-wall approach to filmmaking (if a cook
wants to know if spaghetti is done, they throw a strand at the wall. If it is
done, it will stick): they throw everything they have got at the wall, hoping
something will stick.
My take for the whole enterprise: 2 stars
The unemployed Sang-woo (Jeong
In-gi),
on his day-long subway ride, in "Circle Line".
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