There’s something amusingly appropriate
about the subtitle of the fifth annual New York Korean Film Festival
– "Truth and Dare."
The phrase calls to mind the Madonna documentary "Truth
or Dare" and, intentionally or not, the dozen movies – screening
at BAMcinematek from Sept. 7 to Sept. 11 – have much in common
with the cheeky superstar’s oeuvre.
Within the fest, you’ll find sly social commentary and steamy
sex scenes, overt flirtations with the taboo and women-centered
power struggles, nonsensical occultism and some seriously bad
acting. Even if the NYKFF – like the Material Girl – has taken
a fall this year, you can’t help but acknowledge that if this
isn’t Korea’s golden age of cinema it certainly is a brassy one.
"It’s not a bad thing for a girl to be aggressive,"
says a man early on in director Byeon Hyeok’s harrowing adultery
tale, "The Scarlet Letter." (This particular feature,
which will not play at BAM, closes the NYKFF’s opening week,
which runs Sept. 2 to Sept. 6 at Manhattan’s Lighthouse Theater.)
Throughout the festival, Hyeok’s off-the-cuff endorsement of
tough broads and its implicit critique of guileless ingenues
acts like an unspoken mantra: The strong woman triumphs; the
simplest of girls is doomed.
Take a look at the stereotypically feisty geriatric widows battling
among their marijuana fields in the country-mouse/city-mouse
comedy "Mapado: All About the Hemp and Widows" or the
she-devils fighting for supremacy in the supernatural horror
flick "Bunshinsaba" or the spitting, cursing mom and
her rebellious daughter in the fantasia "My Mother, the
Mermaid," and you’ll notice one recurring fact: The women
are often the primary instigators of action.
When a traditional sweet young thing enters the picture, like
the mail-order bride in Park Young-Hoon’s Pygmalion confection
"Innocent Steps," the immaturity (and malleability)
of her character ends up contributing to her husband’s undoing.
Apparently, even in the world of ballroom dancing, if you’re
not "sure of step," you’re likely to cripple your partner’s
future.
That decidedly contrarian view of the ingenue is taken to the
furthest extreme with the tearjerker "A Moment to Remember."
Akin to Lifetime’s trauma-of-the-week, D-list star vehicles,
this mawkish melodrama de-glamorizes the absentminded naif. This
ditzy designer isn’t a Seoul-full take on Judy Holliday, she’s
someone suffering prematurely from Alzheimer’s. By the final
reel, she’s a simple, pretty, empty shell.
If this all suggests that the NYKFF is nothing more than a gender
studies seminar on celluloid, think again. Like its inadvertently
invoked icon, the festival is filled with contradictions, complexities
and complications. Not quite mysteries perhaps, the despairing,
stylishly shot, existential dramas at which Korean auteurs excel
thrive on ambiguity and ambivalence. They sometimes feel indebted
to ’70s noir; other times, to early Antonioni with a richer palette.
And unlike their peers internationally, these East Asian filmmakers
get untold pleasure out of killing a main character midway ("The
Big Swindle") or otherwise confounding expectations ("Spider
Forest").
The formulaic but immensely enjoyable crime pic "Another
Public Enemy" keeps your attention with its narrative twists
and turns all the while adhering to a classic the law vs. the
rich scenario. And if for no other reason then to mess with your
head, director Kang Woo-Suk has cast the same lead actor (Sol
Kyung-Gu) from his pseudo-prequel "Public Enemy" which
was screened at BAM in 2002, in a completely different part that
bears the same name.
"Hypnotized," this year’s most lavishly realized and
intellectually engaging entry has all the external markings of
a classic noir: unspeakable crimes, rich atmospherics, and a
riveting femme fatale. But to label it a whodunit would be to
undersell what it actually is: a what-the-hell-is-going-on.
Initially the story of an alluring, imbalanced writer and her
soul-searching, world-weary therapist, the narrative of "Hypnotized"
keeps shifting its allegiance from the psychotic siren to the
disturbed psychiatrist. When scenes of the troubled woman’s heartfelt
lovemaking with her possibly fantasized soul-mate jump cut to
a hypnotically induced affair with her doctor, you’re unsure
whose erotic dreams are being realized. That is, if they’re real
at all.
And if you think the violation of the therapist-patient contract
is perverse, you’ll be even more disturbed – and surprised –
by the psychosexual tensions in the slapstick dramedy "A
Romance of Their Own." Here, a young girl must choose between
two lovers: a dashing thug from her high school and her long-absent
half-brother. (Maybe the histrionic family flick "My Brother"
would have benefited from a little incest, too.)
Although laughs may come more readily and often in the likeably
dumb comedy "Ghost House," the twisted love triangle
in "A Romance of Their Own" does have one advantage.
The movie’s crazy plot and adolescent-aged cast ensure that Mrs.
Guy Ritchie will never helm a remake.
BAMcinematek hosts "Truth and Dare:
The New York Korean Film Festival 2005" from Sept. 7 to
Sept. 11. Tickets are $10. The theater is located at 30 Lafayette
Ave. at Ashland Place in Fort Greene. Tickets are $10; $7 seniors
65 and older, children 12 and younger and students 25 and younger
with ID (Mondays through Thursdays). For the Brooklyn festival
schedule, visit the Web site at www.bam.org or call (718) 636-4100.
For the Manhattan schedule, Sept. 2-Sept. 6 at the Lighthouse
Theatre (111 E. 59th St.), visit www.koreanfilmfestival.org.
