NYAFF '09: Film of the Week

If you've got the guts, you adventuresome types need to check out the final New York Asian Film Festival screening (July 2, 2:00pm, IFC Center) of South Korean actor Yang Ik-June's writing and directorial debut Breathless—that ain't no joke of a title. In its first stressful, claustrophobically close-up scene, a woman is beaten senseless in the streets while loan-shark enforcer Sang-hoon (Yang) observes indifferently, then brutalizes the victimizer before unexpectedly smacking around the woman as well (all the while berating her for being a victim). Sleepy-eyed, gutter-mouthed, mustachioed thug Sang-hoon instantly makes for an unsympathetic protagonist, and as his actions soon prove, he'll turn feral on anyone who so much as breathes the wrong way. His violent outbursts are so relentless that even working as a guy who beats up people for a living, his co-workers have to worry about getting beat up by him, too. Could there be a less likeable character in a more unpleasant viewing experience? Would it have been an easier swallow if the filmmaking were flashy or stylized, instead of unadorned and handheld?

Thus, I try to explain why I found the film perversely exhilarating, and why it's my "best in show" prizewinner at this year's NYAFF. 2009 may turn out to be the Year of the Irredeemable Sociopath in auteurist cinema, admittedly based only on the titular anti-heros of Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero (opening in NYC this weekend) and Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson (out in October). But where the former's wickedness is a sick byproduct of an oppressive sociopolitical environment, and the latter is a vaudevillian monster from a good home but in dire need of a creative outlet, Sang-hoon's deviant behavior is reacting to (and thus repeating) a cycle of family violence. It's a battle-scarred middle finger to everyone and everything (the audience, too?), as Yang uses broad movie psychology to validate its violence—which is, coincidentally, as purposefully cyclical as the action in The Hurt Locker, if more persistent and crude. This guy smacks around women, little kids, cops, and even his own father, so why are we still watching this grotesquerie? (And why am I laughing the same hearty but pained laughs from my first viewing of Bad Santa?)

It's because of Lady Game-changer. When Sang-hoon spits on a stranger one fine day, he doesn't realize he'll soon be socially shackled to his human spittoon Yeon-Hee (Kim Gol-Bi), a rebellious, trash-talking schoolgirl that's every bit as confrontational and potty-mouthed as him. With her own flashed-back history of family cruelty (a cynical theme emerges: teaching a cycle of violence is easier than learning it), Yeon-Hee makes a perfect foil for Sang-hoon, busting his chops while he's out busting heads. Quickly becoming best frenemies, the two text each other and ultimately bond in their own aggressive-passive (no, that's correct) sniping. When Sang-hoon opens up to her over beers by the waterfront, his emotional baggage ready to be unloaded late in the film, he tenderly lowers his guard with: "Sometimes you need to drink at a place like this, bitch." The odd coupling is what lightens the mood from upsetting to morbidly funny, as their charisma shares the same tone of beauty and illogicality of Harold & Maude, except a lot more knockdown brawling. Draw your own conclusions about whether such screen intensity is warranted, if an intellectual topic can be expounded upon through visceral means (if all the fighting was romanticized in any way, I'd personally have turned it off within 20 minutes), but in my days digesting it now, I'm especially drawn to the film's subversively positive epilogue: can violence really bring friends together?

Posted by ahillis at June 29, 2009 10:19 PM