Review: Old Boy at TKFF

A scene from Old Boy by Roccoloko on Deviant Art

Old Boy is unquestionably a masterpiece. It saddens to me learn that an American remake is currently in the works (Starring Josh Brolin and possibly Elizabeth Olsen). What is it about the American film industry and their need to remake (already perfect) foreign films for American audiences? Are Americans allergic to subtitles or something? 

Old Boy is the second instalment in Park Chan-wook's The Vengeance Trilogy. However, Old Boy is so much more than just a revenge film. It starts off with Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) drunk in a police station on his daughter's birthday. Luckily his friend bails him out. He calls his daughter from a phone booth to tell her that he is on the way home and then without warning he is abducted. Our only clue at this point is a violet umbrella with an intricate geometric pattern on it. Dae-su then spends the next fifteen years in a prison cell that is done up to look like a cheap motel. His only salvation is his television set. To pass the time he digs a hole out of his cell wall using a single chopstick and of course exercises to get ready for his revenge. He is finally released by being dumped  in a suitcase atop a grassy rooftop. He emerges from the suitcase dazed thinking he is in a grassy meadow. Prior to his release his captor Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae) tells him that he has just five days to unravel the mystery of his fifteen year imprisonment. He has his first meal as a free man at a sushi bar where he meets Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung) a waitress and instantly feels a strong attraction towards her. She later takes him home and having read his prison journals decides to help him on his quest for revenge. 

The resultant story is actually two revenge plots and two love stories rolled into one. The true horror of the film lies in the unexpected psychological torture inflicted upon Dae-su. The ending is purposefully ambiguous and will haunt you long after the film. As with Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (third instalment of this trilogy) the violence in this film never feels unnecessary and is done in such a way that it is visually poetic. I wouldn't say that costuming is an important aspect of this films aesthetic, however, I did like the gold cat-eye sunglasses that Dae-su wears when he is released. The glasses with their exaggerated shape seem to go with his maniacal grin and contrast nicely with his otherwise sombre attire of a black suit and black shirt.

Choi Min-sik is perfect as the tortured Dae-su who was once just an ordinary guy but is now forced to  become (in his words) a "Monster". Yoo Ji-tae brings a surprising amount of pathos to the role of villain Woo-jin. It's hard to imagine how you could feel any sympathy for the twisted Woo-jin but amazingly you do. Kang Hye-jung makes Mi-do an endearing character and throughout the film you just hope that things will work out for her because she seems like such a nice person. I would recommend this film to everyone and especially urge you to see it before viewing the upcoming American remake (director, Spike Lee). To be honest after watching the original you won't be interested in seeing the remake.

Review: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance at TKFF

Perhaps it's easy to compare director Park Chan-wook to Quentin Tarantino but this would be a mistake for several reasons. Park Chan-wook's film are known for their depictions of ultra -violence but they are done in such a poetic way that you almost forget that what you are watching is abhorrent. Ultimately the violence is part of the story and everything flows as one. Quentin Tarantino is a director but Park Chan-wook is an artist. The opening credits for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance are really beautiful (video clip above). It's little details like this that make a film truly memorable for me. It's not essential to have beautiful opening credits which makes having them really special. 

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, stars Lee Young-ae as Geum-ja, a beautiful young woman who is imprisoned at the age of nineteen for abducting and murdering a five year old boy. It is obvious from the beginning that Geum-ja has been framed for this crime. However, flashbacks to her arrest show her vigorously professing her guilt. The film begins with her release from prison as she sets out to enact a revenge plot that she has been planning for thirteen years. She begins by visiting each of her old cell mates and as she does so each of these women has their own flashback about Geum-ja's prison days. I enjoyed these flashbacks as I felt each once showed a different facet of the complex Geum-ja. In prsion Geum-ja has two nicknames, "Kind-hearted Geum-ja" and "The Witch". This may seem contradictory but essentially there are two side to Geum-ja and these two sides are split even further still. She is a complex woman, one that would give a kidney to her cell-mate like she was lending her a pair of shoes but also someone that has no qualms about killing.

Choi Min-sik is excellent as the bad guy, Mr. Baek. It's difficult to imagine how much more you could hate a child killer but Choi Min-sik manages to add that je ne sais quoi to make Mr. Baek especially detestable.

Although this is obviously meant to be quite a dark film, there were wonderful elements of whimsy that added a fairy-tale quality (not unlike the style of Jean Pierre Jeunet). These included Geum-ja's clothes (very Ann Sui), the use of narration, Geum-ja's amazing cakes and nearly every scene with Geum-ja's precocious daughter. 

 Italian poster artwork for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Korean poster artwork for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Review: Failan at TKFF

Failan (Director, Song Hae-sung) is both an unconventional gangster film and romance rolled into one. It is about two people who have never met falling in love with each other. This might seem pretty normal given this digital age that we live in except that one of them is dead. Like two ships in the dark, they just seemed to have missed each other and yet if they had met at the right time both of their lives would have been drastically different. Choi Min-sik plays a low-level gangster named Kang-jae. He marries a Chinese woman named Failan (Cecilia Cheung) through a broker for money but never actually meets her in person. Failan receives only a red skill cravat scarf from Kang-jae and a small passport sized photo, both of which she treasures. As she goes about her daily life working for a laundress in a small seaside town she gradually begins to fall in love with Kang-jae and composes many heartfelt letters but never has the courage to send them. Though Failan's life is truly pitiful (she has no family, lives in squalid conditions and is gravely ill) she never seems to get too hung up on self-pity. Kang-jae receives Failan's letters after her death and although they can never be together he falls in love with her through her letters. Failan then becomes a source of hope that inspires him to change his life. 


Cecilia Cheung is excellent as Failan and it is heartbreaking to see her wait for a man who will never come as her health deteriorates further and further. Choi Min-sik makes Kang-jae's epiphany (upon reading Failan's letters) very believable. The final scenes where he is watching a video of Failan singing on the beach (he finds the tape by accident in his friend's money hiding spot) are both tragic and hauntingly beautiful.

Tonight is the last night of the Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012. Tonight's screenings will be Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (6pm) and Old Boy (9pm). You can purchase tickets at the door (Innis town Hall) for more info click here. 

Review: Leafie, A Hen into the Wild at TKFF

I am not ashamed to say that Leafie, A Hen into the Wild (Director, Oh sung-yun) made me cry not 
once but twice! I'm not sure if any of the children in attendance cried but I know there was at least one other adult woman crying too. This is not only a cute, funny and entertaing animated film for children, it also has many difficult and important lessons to teach them. This is admirable when you consider that Disney films literally teach children nothing except how to occupy rigid gender roles. The film starts off with Leafie in who is a battery hen gazing longingly at the animals who live in the yard. This is were i cried the first time. I was impressed that a children's film would depict the true living conditions of battery hens when the world seems more then happy to gloss over this fact (despite the ready availability and affordability of free range eggs). I think it's good for children to understand modern farming practices and ultimately where their food is coming from. Leafie is even shown with a bald neck and emaciated frame (typical of battery hens). She starves herself for three days to play dead which is the only way that she can get out of the battery and into the yard. Here again the film does not shy away from reality, The farmer is shown making his nightly rounds collecting all of the dead hens (a lot!) and heaping them into a wheelbarrow for disposal in a pit outside. From the pit Leafie narrowly escapes being eaten by a weasel, thanks to the help of a handsome guard duck named Wanderer. Leafie then finds a nice briar patch to live in with the help of the local real-estate agent, Otter. When her friend Wanderer and his wife are killed by the weasel Leafie is left to care for their egg. She hatches the egg and names the duckling Greenie. Unfortunately because of their difference in species the other animals are hesitant to accept them as mother and son. However, Leafie and Greenie must remain strong and ultimately they prove to the other animals that love transcends such differences which are ultimately trivial. 


Spoiler Alert In the end Greenie joins a flock of ducks and there are lots of sad moments between Leafie and Greenie struggling to say goodbye. During this time leafie accidentally discovers the weasel's burrow whilst looking for a warm place during the first snow. There she discovers the weasel's litter and is instantly taken by the cute babies. It is only when the weasel returns that Leafie realises that the babies she has been cuddling and keeping warm are the weasel's babies. She is shocked that things so innocent and beautiful could come from the weasel that killed and ate her friends. The weasel has caught a duck but Greenie rescues the duck and says goodbye to Leafie one last time. However, because Greenie rescued that duck from the weasel she now has no food which means that she can't nurse her litter. 


At the end when leafie watches Greenie fly away with his new flock for the winter, the weasel approcahes her from behind. Leafie takes a deep breath and says, 'Yes. You can eat me so that you're babies do not starve'. The weasel is obviously shocked by this but does as Leafie says. At this point I lost it and was crying like child. Leafie of course has realised that the weasel is not a monster, just another animal trying to survive in the wild in the only way that it knows how. Again, I was really impressed that such a concept was presented in a children's film. The majority of adults fail to comprehend/accept this basic fact of life and instead vilify predators like weasels who are merely trying to survive, just as we all are.


For more information on the Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012 and to purchase tickets please click here.

Review: Mother at TKFF

Mother (director, Bong Joon-ho) is a beautifully shot spin on the film-noir genre. Throughout the film one is constantly readjusting their assessment of the main characters. Things start off simple enough though. You have a widow (Kim Hye-ja) living with her son Do-joon (Won-bin) who is in his late twenties and has an intellectual disability that is hard to define. We get the impression early on that his disability is the result of some sort of accident and not one that he was born with. He is childlike and has difficulty remembering things but at times this is punctuated by an almost frightening lucidity. Do-joon hangs around with Jin-tae (Jin-goo) whom his mother refers to as being a 'bad seed'. Jin-tae is a bit rough around the edges but he does genuinely care for Do-joon in his own way. Mother supports herself and Do-joon by selling medicinal herbs from a tiny and impossibly dark shop and also by doing acupuncture without a license. Suddenly one day a beautiful school girl is found brutally murdered with her corpse left dangling over a rooftop railing for all to see. A golf ball with Do-joon's name scribbled on it is found next to the body so he is immediately taken into custody. Of course his difficulty remembering things doesn't help him out in this situation. We want to believe his innocence as he stares into the camera with eyes that another character describes as "... a work of art, like a deer's". Mother goes on a quest to prove Do-joons innocence and she will literally stop at nothing to do so. In the process of her investigation we learn the tragic details of the murdered school girl Ah-jeong's life as she fends for herself whilst taking care of her senile and alcoholic grandmother.

Won-bin is truly excellent as Do-joon. When playing characters that are intellectually disabled actors have a tendency to over do things but Won-bin kept his performance completely believable throughout which was of course integral to the film's overall impact. Kim Hye-ja is also excellent as mother (we never learn her name) who is on the surface a simple and impoverished woman caring for her son but is in actuality more complex than you could ever guess. I also enjoyed Jin-goo's performance as Jin-tae, in particular during the carnival interrogation scene. He added unexpected moments of humour to what was otherwise a very dark film  .

The two main themes of the film are forgetting and remembering and ultimately which do you choose to do and why. The final scene depicts this most accurately and will linger in your mind long after the film is done.

For more info on the Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012 and to purchase tickets, click here.