Shim’s Family / <좋지 아니한가> 2007

Directed by: Jeong Yoon-cheol / 정윤철
Release date: March 2007

The Shims – mom, dad, sister, brother, and one aunt – are not a normal family, in fact, they are all pretty quirky. The film follows each of them through a number of misadventures. The brother’s attempt at suicide, the sister being punish for asking questions in class, the frustrated-writer aunt’s break-up with her boyfriend, the mother’s romantic liaison with a much younger man, the father’s contretemps with a high-school student in a hotel room which ends up broadcast live over the internet—these are just the beginnings of their misadventures. This seems like a family about to self-destruct but the final straw—the family mutt’s pursuit of a neighbor’s pure-bred poodle—will unleash chaos and bring the family together.

A very quirky film but totally engaging from beginning to end. The director has a deft touch with comedy and the cinematography is sometimes spectacular, sometimes, well, quirky, but always extremely well done. In its own fun way, the movie had a powerful message: life can send us lemons, if folks close to each other can come together and help each other, they can enjoy the lemonade. The happy ending in this film was hard won, not in any way saccharine sweet.

My take: 5 stars!

On a scorchingly hot evening, family members

(Hwang Bo-ra, Yoo Ah-in, Kim Hye-soo) relax down by the

creek with their dog, just before chaos breaks loose.

Touch / <터치> 2012

Directed by: Min Byeong-hoon / 민병훈
Release date: November 2012

An uncannily sensitive woman tries to make better all the troubling situations around her – people neglected by the health system, child abusers, troubled teens – and, for the most part, her gestures all go wrong. Yet she seems incapable of doing anything but keep on trying. The heartbreaks and frustrations just go on and on.

An oddly dark film, with large gaps in the plot left unexplained. Deer make frequent appearances in the film, symbolizing something but it’s not clear what. The filmmaker had some sort of vision about being "애매하다" (vague, obscure) but it did not work well and we spent much of the film trying to guess just what was supposed to be going on. Superb and sensitive acting. An overdone soundtrack that was much too intrusive. 

My take: 1 star

Her husband balks at shooting an oddly complacent deer 
and radically changes his luck.

Modern Family / <가족 시네마> 2012

Directed by: Hong Ji-young, 홍지영 / Kim Seong-ho, 김성호 / Lee Soo-yeon, 이수연 / Shin Su-won, 신수원
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". 

The Peach Tree / <복숭아나무> 2012

Directed by Koo Hye-seon / 구혜선

Release date: October 2012

Tong-hyun and Sang-hyun are Siamese twins who have not been separated (ignore the film poster, they are still attached). The twins live in total seclusion in a creapy old house with their father, until Tong-hyun decides he wants to publish a book telling their story. The father brings in a ditzy young woman, Seong-ah, to do the artwork and Tong-hyun manages to hide the fact he has two heads (actually, two faces on opposite sides of a conjoined head, a condition called cephalopagus, rarely survives birth), but she eventually discovers the truth. In the meantime, his book will be published and he becomes a major celebraty. Still, what he really wants is to be normal (and to lose Sang-hyun).

Some interesting make-up and cinematography tricks were employed to create this realistic appearing case of cephalopagus Siamese twins; unfortunately the depiction left all of us with a major ick feeling while watching the film. What the director had in mind for this film never becomes clear and she is all over the map—is it a horror film? A thriller? A fantasy? A drama? A message film? The film fails to tell its story well at all. The eternal cheerfulness of the female artist, the publicity feeding frenzy, a lot of aspects of the film made us laugh when it was not supposed to be funny. A much more nuanced and cinematically satisfying depiction of the struggles of the disabled has been done, for example, in one of my favorite films, Oasis.

My take: no stars

Tong-hyun, in a vampirish hood, meets his new

artist-collaborator, Seong-ah

(Ryoo Deok-hwan and Nam Sang-mi).

Grape Candy / <청포도 사탕> 2012

Full Title: Grape Candy: A 17-Years-Ago Promise

청포도 사탕: 17년 전의 약속
Directed by: Kim Hee-jung / 김희정
Release date: September 2012

Jin-hee, a bank clerk, lives with her fiancé who works for a publishing company. She is suspicious when a femme fatale novelist shows up in her fiancé’s life, only to discover that So-ra was her friend in high-school. Jin-hee is uneasy about this time in her past, as she has lost all memory of those days. Sora hints at some questions about this shared past, seeming to involved their mutual friend, Yeo-eun. But what happened to Yeo-eun is also something Jin-hee can’t remember. Jin-hee and So-ra set off on an uneasy journey together to negotiate what is hidden in Jin-hee’s memory. Will this destroy Jin-hee … or re-make her?

A visually sumptuous film; the cinematography is breathtaking! The filming technique created a monochromatic feeling of claustrophobia, brooding, and mystery. The story-telling was also flawless. 

My take: 5 stars!

So-ra and Jin-hee on their journey

(Park Ji-yoon and Park Jin-hee).

Everything About My Wife / <내 아내의 모든 것> 2012

Directed by: Min Gyoo-dong, 민규동
Release date: May 2012

Doo-hyeon met, fell for, and married Jeong-in while they are both in Japan and she had sworn to speak only Japanese and was playing at the part of a “submissive Japanese woman”. Once she is back in Korea, she reverts to the annoying, neurotic, self-centered motor-mouth she apparently always was. After seven years of marriage to this bizarre woman, Doo-hyeon wants out. He tries to get a job relocation to the boondocks, but she follows him. He hires a Casanova to seduce his wife so she will have to leave him first but she won’t fall for the guy. Doo-hyeon is ready try anything to get her out of his life. But then when he succeeds …

If you are a really, really big fan of Im Soo-jeong, then that might be a reason to watch this film. Otherwise, don’t bother, it is long and tiresome. The humor is thin on the ground and the plot pretty weak. Just lots and lots of on-screen time of Im running her mouth. The only humor for me was the epilogue while the credits were running.  

My take: 1 star

 Jeong-in (Im Soo-jeong) gets snarky

at a company dinner party.

Doomsday Book / <인류멸망보고서> 2012

Directed by: Kim Ji-woon & Lim Pil-seong / 김지운, 임필성
Release date: April 2012

A science-fiction omnibus film, presenting different views of the future. The first piece features zombies—a virus develops out of waste-food being re-cycled as feed for cattle which turns folks into flesh-eat ghouls. Lot of staggering zombies, charnage and bodily fluids, and even a zombie Adam and Eve. The second story posits the question of what makes humankind different from other entities. What if a robot gains so much intelligence that it might reach… enlightenment? The robot in question lives in a temple and questions existence (in a very Buddhist sort of way) while the other monks and nuns come to consider it as a great teacher. Will society be able to accept such a robot or will it be seen as an abomination? No matter how much an entity feels, thinks, and questions like a human, can it ever be considered anything more than a machine? The third piece tells a tale of a family preparing a doomsday shelter in the heart of Seoul in anticipation of the collision of an asteroid with the earth.

For "The New Generation", the piece featuring zombies, I was bored to tears. The only flash of genius was in the television news panel. It was also puzzling why re-cycling would be depicted as the danger to the future of humankind rather than as one important part of the effort to save the earth. Odd choice. My take: no stars

The middle piece, “Heaven’s Creation”, was beautifully created, well-acted, gorgeous to watch, emotionally moving and thought provoking—a masterpiece! This must have been an interesting film for the cast and crew to work in, with one of the protagonists being basically a life-size dummy of wire and shiny plastic. The thoughts and emotions that flickered across the robot’s face were sheer filmic wizardry! The director for this segment, Kim Ji-woon, has directed an eclectic variety of films, I look forward to more in this more speculative vein. My take: 5 stars!

The third section, “Happy Birthday”, had some great comic visuals and an unfathomable plot: something about an asteroid coming to destroy life on earth and a billiard ball being launched to try to save the day. In this work as well, sequences focusing on TV news panels or the shopping channel were wildly funny. The direct of the first and third pieces, Lim Pil-seong, has a genius for satirizing broadcasting. My take: 5 stars!

My take for the whole ensemble: 3 stars

The robot at its prayers.