May 20, 2007

Cannes. Breath.

Breath Kim Ki-duk, "whose international reputation was based for many years on the excesses he indulged in films like The Isle or Bad Guy, doesn't quite achieve the same heights he climbed in Spring, Summer..., but he doesn't need to shock anymore and works wonders within the minimalist conditions he imposes on himself," writes Dan Fainaru at Screen Daily of the Competition entry, Breath (Sum).

Variety's Derek Elley: "One of the South Korean maverick's sparest and most dispassionate works, though still marbled with weirdly comic and tender moments, this quietly affecting item will play best to Kim's existing fan club rather than enroll many new members."

The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett agrees - and gives us the set-up: A "young wife whose husband is cheating on her gains revenge by visiting a soon-to-be-executed murderer and having the strangest of affairs with him."

Update, 5/21: At ScreenGrab, Mike D'Angelo suggests that Breath will "likely be remembered as the movie in which his predilection for mute protagonists officially became intolerable even to his fans.... How the festival could prefer Breath to Kim's last film, the superb and richly allegorical Time, which screened here only in the Market, is beyond my comprehension. It's as if they'd turned down Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration, then programmed It's All About Love."

Update, 5/25: "It's one of those stories with a predictable arc, and this one requires a more imaginative treatment than Kim has managed to summon for it," write Richard and Mary Corliss for Time.

Cannes @ 60. Index.

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2007 3:52 PM