Busan Dispatch. 2.

A regular part of PIFF has been a retrospective on a director from South Korean cinema's past that has yet to be fully appreciated internationally. Directors like Kim Ki-young and Yu Hyon-mok have been featured. This year's festival looks at the career of Lee Man-hee. Lee primarily worked in genre films. His genre repertoire included war films (The Marines Who Never Returned [also known as The Marines Who Didn't Come Home, 1963]), horror films (The Evil Stairs [also known as The Devil's Stairway, 1964]), film noir (Black Hair [1964]) and thrillers (The Starting Point [1967]).

The mountain-climbing, suspense thriller The Starting Point, would be a good starting point for anyone interested in Lee's work. A robber (played by Shin Seong-il) who has accidentally killed a man while stealing secret files is sent off to the mountainside on a newlywed package to avoid the consequences of his actions' actions. Since such a package requires he present himself as if he's just been betrothed, a prostitute (played by Moon Hee) is hired to pose as his wife. Little do both know: this is all a ruse set up in order to off him and clean up the mess he left during the heist. At the same time, his "wife's" real identity is revealed through a doctor's violation of doctor/patient privilege by telling all the other couples that she's a prostitute. This sets things up for two ostracized individuals to fall in love.

The film begins with an adventurous choice on Lee's part, two dialogue-less sequences that are nicely laid out, the foiled heist and the negotiations between prostitute and john that establishes our female lead's profession. During the foiled heist, we witness languishingly drawn out moments as the robber tries to crawl away from the clutches of the man from whom he's stealing. The chase scenes that erupt on the mountain are quite suspenseful considering the time they were made and the dangerous conditions they were made in. Several awkward camera angles are utilized to enhance the danger and suspense and they work fairly well, making for an enjoyable film.

The same can't be said for Break The Chain! (1971), however. Although our three main characters are interestingly quirky, the screenplay, set in the time of Japanese colonization, and the dialogue are all over the place, making it difficult to connect the plot points in one screening if they are connectible at all in the first place. I could summarize it by simply saying: a spy, an assassin, and an independence fighter meet in a bar and all hell breaks loose, but not necessarily intentionally. Their identities are somewhat ambiguous, but are also poorly developed. The film lost me at several moments and, based on the laughter of many in the crowd at certain points, it seems they'd agree.

One of the areas responsible for the creative explosion in South Korean films for the past several years has been the relaxing of censorship laws. There are still some things, however, that cannot be shown. Im Sang-soo had to excise the documentary footage at the end of The President's Last Bang because the censors didn't like the facts so close to his fiction. The screening here at PIFF, or anywhere since its initial screening for the press, does not include that footage. Graphic displays of sexuality are still contained somewhat by censors as well. Films like Park Chul-soo's Green Chair (not screening) are still quite blunt in their sexual frankness, but there are still certain taboos, such as no pubic hair (as in Japan) and no erect penises and actual penetration (as in the United States if you want an R-rating).

Film festivals, however, are permitted a waiver to show films that contain images that would not normally be permitted to grace the multiplex. And Clement Virgo's latest Canadian feature, Lie With Me, definitely takes advantage of these liberties. Let's just say it was confirmed that Rachel (Lauren Lee Smith) is a natural redhead. The film follows Rachel as she struggles through her existential dilemma regarding her sexual self. As adventurous as she is, she needs to be in control at all times. But when she meets the gorgeous David (Eric Balfour), she begins to lose herself in ways for which she is not ready. With all the talk recently about Hollywood's "unhealthy" portrayals of sex, let's give it up for Canada for showing how sexy condom use can be. Still, when people talk about how sex in Hollywood films is portrayed without showing the "consequences," they only mean the negative consequences. Hollywood often shows us the positive consequences, that is, that it can be freakin' fun getting freaky. Lie With Me shows the ecstasy along with the pain that can accompany all that takes place in carnal forums. The film isn't outstanding, and perhaps it's the Boards of Canada-esque soundtrack weaved in and out that had me enjoying it more than it warranted, but the film follows in an honorable tradition of showing where sexual obsession can lead us. In this case, it was somewhere the characters wanted to be.

And somewhere I wanted to eventually be at PIFF was watching South Korean director Lee Yoon-ki's second feature, Love Talk. His debut, This Charming Girl, was a well-paced character study about a woman wrestling with her demons while trying to open her life to the angels who occasionally enter. The actress who presented that powerful performance, Kim Ji-soo, makes a brief appearance in Love Talk, but that's about the only similarity with the previous film. This second feature fails to generate as much critical talk because director Lee appears to have taken on too much. A man comes to LA in hopes of rekindling a romance with his ex-lover who has a radio show where she gives advice about love. He rents a room from an older woman who works at a "massage" parlor. Their lives intertwine, full of missed and made connections. Even if we put aside the problems of poor performances by the Western actors and other language barrier difficulties, the film falls flat. Of all the films I've seen so far, this is the one I've found myself thinking the least about.

But I will probably be thinking about Austrian director Benjamin Heisenberg's film Sleeper for some time. The film focuses on Johannes (Bastian Trost) as he struggles with his ambivalence about helping the German secret service trail a Muslim resident named Farid (Mehdi Nebbou). The film is less a spy thriller and more a look at the competition inherent within many male friendships. Due to the real life events going on in our world presently, we will likely see more such films with subplots involving Muslim terrorists. Nebbou's performance and Heisenberg's script add up to one of the more complicated and nuanced portrayals, one that doesn't involve clichés seen in the more mainstream presentations of this emerging genre. And if such alternative portrayals are ever to see the dark of a theater, it will be film festivals taking the first step.

Posted by dwhudson at October 10, 2005 5:11 AM