Yang (Jang Dong Gun) is a member of an assassin clan and the best swordsman in the world. He wipes out the last members of his clans enemy except a little baby girl, who he saves, but by doing so he makes an enemy of his clan, an they will be after him. Yang heads to the United States to visit an old friend who runs a laundry in a western town named Lode along with the baby. The down is completely run down and Yang is dead, and the residents are trying to rebuild the town into a circus to draw people back to what was once the Paris of the West. The town is run by the midget Eight-Ball (Tony Cox) and he almost meets the town drunk Ron (Geoffrey Rush) and Lynne (Kate Bosworth) who was friends with Smiley, Yang’s dead friend, and who adopts him and helps him take over the laundromat. Of course all is not good in the town, as it has been ravenged by a gang led by The Colonel (Danny Huston) who previously shot Lynne after trying to rape her and killing her parents.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Yang begins to like his life in the little town, as he learns to plant (strangely flowers instead of vegetables) and clean and have a normal life, but he also starts to train Lynne in the ways of the sword, and she ends up kissing him.

Meanwhile his clans leader Saddest Flute (the great Ti Lung) heads to America to find Yang, and waits to hear his sword drawn, but Yang has sealed his sword so he won’t use it.

The Colonel arrives, and sends most of his men away, but keeps a few and is going to rape a young woman with good teeth, but Lynne goes to him to try and kill him, but he recognizes her smell and is going to kill her, and she is saved by Yang (which alerts Saddest Flute to his location), and the Colonel escapes by dressing as one of his men, and Lynne kills the man dressed like her.

The town must then prepare for a siege. Yang is going to leave with the baby, but he stays to help the town, and Eight Ball gets Ron to come out of retirement, as he is the best shot there is, but swore not to shoot again when his wife died. And they have a hidden cache of weapons and dynamite, and Ron goes to the top of the ferris wheel to shoot dynamite and blow it up as the gang enters the town. Many of the town are killed in the battle.

And as the bandits attack, Saddest Flute and his men arrive.

Yang and Lynne fight the Colonel and she ends up killing them, but then Saddest Flute confronts them, and says that the little girl is his enemy, and will he tell her that he is her enemy and killed her whole clan?

We see Yang’s training as a boy and having to kill the puppy he raised himself, and he kills Saddest Flute, cutting his throat.

Yang then hands the baby to Lynne, and leave, staying as far from her as he can, as the clan can track him.

The film ends with Yang in the snow being attacked by a woman, who he kills with a fish, and then being attacked by clan members, and we see his katana has the baby’s pacifier in it, as he loves her.

•••

A ridiculous, strange and yet sort of fun film, with great action and visuals.

A older widow (Kim Hye-ja) lives in a small town working selling herbs and doing unlicensed acupuncture for her clients. She has a son named Do-joon (Won Bin) who has mental problems, and she does everything to take care of him and keep him out of trouble, but is not easy. A rich man in his car hits Do-Joon an takes off, so his only friend Jin-tae (Jin-goo) grabs him and they chase after it to get revenge. Jin-tae smashes the window off the car and steals the man’s gold clubs, but since Yoon Do-joon can’t remember what happened, he gets blamed and his mother is forced to pay off the man for the damage. When a local school girl is murdered, and some golf balls that Do-joon has written his name on are found there, Do-joon is quickly blamed. When they take him into the station he signs the confession, though he doesn’t think he did it, and the case seems locked and shut, but his mother sets out to prove her sons innocence.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

First the mother suspects Jin-tae and sneaks into his house, finding a golf club with blood on it. Jin-tae wakes up with his girlfriend and they have sex, and the mother must wait and sneak out and go to the police station. There it is shown that that it is not blood, but lipstick, and Jin-tae has video to show when his girlfriend got it on the club.

Jin-tae then forces her to pay him money, but then helps her to do some investigating, as he is interested in police investigations and his friend.

The mother tries to get help from good lawyers, but they are really no help at all. and she eventually fires them as they want to get him put in a mental institution instead of going up for murder charges.

The mother keeps searching, and eventually finds that the murdered girl had a cell phone on which she took of all the men that she prostituted herself with to help pay for her and her crazy grandmother she took care of, and she eventually gets the phone from the grandmother. On the phone is a photo of the local trash collector.

It turns out their is another crazy kid who escaped from a mental institution and had the girl’s blood on his shirt (and the mother has found that the girl did have nose bleeds) and he is to charged and Do-joon released.

The mother goes with her acupuncture kit to pay a visit to the trash collector, where he tells her that he saw the whole thing. Do-joon had been following the girl and she went into the building the old man was hiding in. She threw at big rock at Do-joon, and Do-joon picked up the rock and threw it back (the mother had told him to never be bullied) and the rock hit her in the head and killed her. Do-joon then grabbed her and dragged her to the roof, hoping that someone would see her and get her help, and promptly forgot.

The trash collector decides he has to go to the police to make sure Do-joon is released, so the mother kills him and burns the house.

Do-joon and Jin-tae end up looking through the house wreckage, and Do-joon finds his mother’s acupuncture, which he returns to his mother, and she goes on taking care of her son.

She does go and see the kid who is being charged with the murder and asks if he has a mother, and when he says no, she starts weeping, as at least her son has a mother who loves him, and she has saved her son, even if he is a killer.

••••

A really intense and good film. Korea is really making some great films.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Interior Design

Directed by Michel Gondry.

A young couple moves to Tokyo with all their possessions in there beater of a car. This is Hiroko (Fujitani Ayako) and Akira (Kase Ryo) and they go to stay with their college friend Akemi (Ito Ayumi) in her microscopic apartment, promising to find their own place. Akira is a filmmaker, who makes really low budget, strange films, and his film is going to be screened at a local porn theater, and gets a job wrapping paper at a local store. Hiroko does not do much, sitting around and cutting out photos from magazines and making collages, and halfheartedly looking for an apartment, though there is nothing good that they can afford.

Akira shows his film, which gets some seemingly good response (though it seems that most people are just trying to be nice), and starts questioning if Hiroko has any drive.

Hiroko starts to question her relationship with Akira, and when out on a walk around the city, begins a literal transformation into a chair. First changing part by part, then fully into a chair, and changing back into her naked self, only to change again into a chair.

Hiroko as a chair gets taken to a cute guys apartment, and starts to live her life as his chair. Looking over his shoulder as he works. And his chair does keep moving, even being found in the bath.

Hiroko writes Akira a letter, telling him about how happy she is with her new life.

•••

So very very strange, but enjoyable, and the effects are great too. It seems like a normal story, then just goes nuts with her turning into a chair. Really fun.

____________________________________________

Merde
Directed by Léos Carax.

Tokyo is invaded by a strange sewer dwelling creature named Merde (Denis Lavante). He comes out of his sewer and causes mayhem, stealing money and eating it. Taking cigarettes and phones, and whatever he can. He licks women, and causes chaos before going back into the sewers. This causes an uproar in Tokyo, and they send police underground to find him.

Underground Merde finds a cache of grenades from World War 2 and comes up and starts throwing grenades everywhere, killing many innocent bystanders. Merde is finally captured and taken to prison, but no one can speak his strange language.

A lawyer from France named Maítre Voland (Jean-Francois Balmer) who has a very similar look to the sewer creature and seems to be able to speak the creatures language. He represents Merde in court.

The court obviously does not like Merde, and he tells them that he does not like them, and he always awakes living in the place with the people he hates he most. He is found guilty and set to be killed.

Merde is hung, bu then the lights go out and when they come back on, Merde has escaped!

••••

Just plain weird, and not at all enjoyable. I am sure there was a message about media in there, but it was so covered, literally in Merde that I don’t even want to think about it.

____________________________________________

Shaking Tokyo

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

The story of a Tokyo shut-in or hikikomori (Kagawa Teruyuki) who has not left his apartment in a decade. He lives off of money sent by his father, and orders everything in, leaving stacks of his pizza boxes. He even falls asleep on the toilet next to the stack of toilet paper rolls. And he never watches TV, just reads and rereads old books.

Then one day is different when a beautiful young pizza deliver girl (Aoi Yu) with tattoos manages to catch his eye.

An Earthquake then happens and the girl faints into his apartment, and the hikikomori is stuck. He has to help her, but doesn’t want to touch her. He gets her water. Then sees that she has tattoos, and finds one for coma, and pushes it, and she instantly wakes up. Asking if he pushed the button. She walks around his apartment, declaring it perfect, except one of his stacked pizza boxes is upside down, which he fixes. She then leaves, but he is totally and utterly in love with her.

The hikikomori excited calls to get her to deliver pizza again, but finds a gruff older man (the great Takenaka Naoto) who barges in and uses the phone, scaring the man badly. It turns out he is the owner, and the girl just quit, leaving him to deliver Pizza by himself.

The hikikomori realizes that she is a new Hikikomori, and is becoming a shut in, and decides he must go see her, and save her from a life of lonliness.

The man slowly heads out across the city, scared of his own shadow and the sunlight, but he manages to find her place, just as another Earthquake hits.

He manages to get her to open the door, but she won’t come out, until he grabs her arm, and hits her tatoo for love. Leaving them both hopelessly in love.

•••

Very strange, but enjoyable. Amazing that people like this exist, and a cute love story using these trappings. fun.

____________________________________________

Overall a very strange set of films. You might want to see them, but don’t expect to be blown out of the water, and I would recommend skipping Merde all together!

Song Kang-ho (송강호) plays an orphan catholic priest Sang-hyeon, working at a hospital, who feels that just his praying is not doing enough good. He grew up in a Catholic orphanage under the tutelage of the now blind priest Noh (Park In-Hwan 박인환) who wanted him to become a doctor. Sang-hyeon volunteers for an experiment to find a vaccine for the deadly Emmanuel Virus (EV) in Africa, which causes lesions and boils, and always death, though only in men. Sang-hyeon is given the disease, and gets sicker and sicker, losing his nails, and getting boils and finally coughing up blood, so he is given a transfusion, but dies. The doctors declare him dead, but as they cover him, they hear him praying, and he has somehow survived. He returns to Korea, the only survivor, and still a carrier of the deadly disease, and covered in lesions and boils, so he is wrapped in bandages, and the people think he is a miracle, so they want him to pray for them to heal, and people even start camping outside of the congregation. Lady Ra shows up (Kim Hae-sook 김해숙) to get him to pray for her son Kang-woo (Sin Ha-gyoon 신하균). It turns out Kang-woo and Sang-hyeon were old friends as kids, so the invite the priest to come and stay with them, where he also meets Tae-joo (Kim Ok-bin 김옥빈), Kang-Woo’s wife. He had known her as a kid as well, thinking she was Kang-woo’s barefooted sister, but in fact was an orphan they took in, and treated like a dog, and then made her marry the son when she was old enough. Tae-joo is obviously very unhappy, and will do anything to get out. The family holds a majong game with there friends, and that night Sang-hyeon becomes sensitive to all sounds, and collapses and when he awakens he is now sensitive to sunlight, he has become a vampire.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Sang-hyeon is now filled with new desires and wants, and now has superhuman strength, and finds himself drinking blood from a comatose patient he watched slip into a coma before he left for Africa.

He ends up confiding in the blind priest Noh, who also lets him suck his blood, which heals the lesions from EV which keep returning. Sang-hyeon jumps from a building to kill himself, landing on a car, but heals, and his symptoms come back, so he needs more blood, and starts stealing transfusion packs from the hospital.

San-hyeon becomes drawn to Tae-joo, and she eventually comes to the hospital to “volunteer,” where they have sex for the first time, but when he shows her he is a vampire, she runs, but realizes she can use him to get away from the family she hates.

Tae-joo injures her legs with the tool she uses to sow at the traditional korean shop she works at with her mother in law, below their apartment, and that she wants to stab her idiot husband with. She makes San-hyeon think that her husband did it, and the two plot to drown him at a local damn where they fish at night. They drown the man, putting him in a cabinet in an old building under the water, with a rock on it, and report to the police.

Ra gets sick when she hears of her son, unable to move except a few fingers and her eyes, but she is brought home, where San-hyeon and Tae-joo now live together, having sex, but both being haunted by the memories of the dead husband. The couple have a huge huge fight in front of the mother who sees it all, realizing they killed her son. Tae-joo begs to be killed, and Sang-hyeon becomes enraged and does, but then draws his own blood and gives it to her, making her a vampire as well, and bringing her back.

They paint the apartment all white since they can no longer see the sun. And Tae-joo gets EV as well, even though she has a women, and needs blood to survive, but she loves the hunt. Sang-hyeon wants to never kill, though he ends up killing priest Noh, when the man begs to be made a vampire himself so he can see again, and live forever.

The couple fight even more over their way of life, with Sang-hyeon feeling more and more guilt.

Then the majong friends show up for a game, and the mother is able to communicated that the couple killed her son, and they go mad, killing them and hanging them to drain the blood. Sang-hyeon does not kill one friends Philipino wife (Merceds Cabral) though, and they run in their car with the mother.

When Tae-joo wakes up, they are at a cliff’s edge with nothing around, as the sun is about to come up. She tries to hide from the sun, in the trunk, under the car, wherever she can, but he fights her and leaves no place to hide. The two finally drink some more blood, and burt into flames as the sun comes up and the mother watches helplessly from inside the car.

•••

Such a messed up movie, but really enjoyable. We see the girl who wanted to become a vampire right away, and felt no wrong with killing to survive, and Sang-hyeon who has his priests guilt, which eventually makes him kill himself and the woman he thirsts for.

As I have said, this does not touch Old Boy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance or I’m a Cyborg but that’s OK, but it is still a powerful horror film, and well worth checking out.

In Japanese occupied Manchuria, a rich and powerful man sends a very important map to be sent to the President of the Japanese Imperial Bank, named Kanemaru, who is traveling by train. He then hires his associate Park Chang-yi AKA the Bad (Lee Byung-hun) to go with his gang of robbers to steal it back. Meanwhile the Korean independence movement has hired Park Do-win aka The Good (Ju Woo Sung) who is also sent to get the Map, but also to get the bounty on Park, who he believes is a man called the Finger Chopper who has been chasing for some time. On the train Kanemaru gets robbed by a third man, The Weird also known as Yoon Tae-goo (Song Kang-ho) who gets the map, just as Park and his gang shows up and stops it, and Yoon shows up gunning for Park, but ends up going after Yoon and the map. Yoon though is picked up by his friend Man Gil (Ryoo Seung-soo 류승수) on a motorcycle, and they go off to figure out the map.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Yoon shows the Map to his friend, who figures it is a map to buried treasure, and Yoon wants to find it and get money for he and his Grandmother to go where they want. Yoon is hunted by a gang from the Ghost Market, an illegal market that sells anything, and it’s leader Byoung Choon (Yoon Je-moon 윤제문).

Park returns to his benefactor without the map, and kills him, and takes his money, then heads out to get the map, and the treasure.

Do-won manages to capture Yoon, and they go to get the map together. Do-won admits to Tae-goo that he is after the Finer Chopper who he believes is Chang-yi.

Man Gil sells a copy of the map to Byoung Choon, but then gets caught by Park, and gets all sliced up by his knife techniques, and is about to die, but Do Won and Tae-goo show up to save him, and a huge shootout follows in the ramshackle town of the Ghost Market, with 2 gangs, and the bad ass Tae-goo taking on as many as he can.

Tae-goo runs for it on a motorcycle, with Tae-goo following, but so are Chang-yi and his men, and Byung Choon and his men. Tae-goo ends up going to a border town brothel, and gets robbed, but the proprietor who works for the Japanese selling Opium, but manages to escape with some kids and the map.

As he runs, the Japanese army shows up, and now he has 3 groups chasing him. Do-won shows up, and kicks some serious ass, taking on much of the Japanese army himself, and allowing Tae-goo to get away.

Tae-goo finds the location on the map, and doesn’t know what it is. Do-won shows up and they find a big pit, but don’t know what it is (Seems to be an oil well), then Chang-yi shows up with some treasure, and says they will have a 3 way shoot out for the treasure. Tae-goo doesn’t want to join, but when Chang-yi tells how Tae-goo is the finger chopper who cut off his finger, then Do-won makes him join too.

The shootout occurs, and all are badly shot, with Do-won shooting Chang-yi last. Do-won’s sister shows up to take him away, and then Tae-goo awakens, it seems like Eastwood he used a metal plate to protect his chest, and is still alive. He drags Chang-yi into the well and tires him up with explosives, finding his bag of huge diamonds. The Japanese show up, but Tae-goo sets off the dynamite, blowing the well, and getting away.

The film ends with Chang-yi’s wanted poster being ex-ed out as Tae-goo’s is changed to $3500, and Do-won is now on the hunt for him.

••••

Such a fun film, especially Song Kang-ho who just steals the show. This is an absolute must see film! A must see!!

The film stars with Oh Hyun-Woo (Ji Jin-hee 지진희) being released from prison after 17 years, and trying to fit back into society. Moving in with his now rich mother and trying to cope with being released. He slowly tries to get himself re-oriented to society, and a new world to him, one where his lover, Han Yoon-Hee (Yeom Jeong-ah 염정아) has died years before, without a word being able to passed between them since he went to prison. Eventually Hyun-Woo goes to search out his old life, and goes to the house in the country where he lived with Yoon-Hee, and looks through her paintings and things and starts to remember their time together.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Hyun who remembers the time before his prison when he was on the run after the Gwanju massacre, hiding out, and trying to keep under the radar, barely keeping in contact with his friends. Yoon-Hee, who was a school teacher, took him in, and eventually got him to love her. The thing is as more and more of his friends were arrested, he felt more distance from her, and eventually against her wishes goes and turns himself in, and is arrested for 17 years, without being able to see her.

We then see the world from Yoon-Hee’s point of view, where she took this guy in, and loved him, and he left her. Even worse she was pregnant, and because she was brought in for having hardboard him, she is not allowed to contact him to even let him know that she is pregnant, so all she can do is have the child and raise it herself.

Yoon-Hee did leave her daughter with her mother, as she went to college, and took in a group of young radicals, as she painted. And she almost had a romance, but really couldn’t do it, and she painted and smoked, and eventually came down with cancer.

Yoon-Hee then went back to the house, and painted for the end of her life, until she died.

Hyun Woo in the present looks at the paintings, and finds out from the women whose house it is, where his daughter is, and he calls her and sets up a meeting, pretending to be a friend of her parents.

Hyun Woo meets his beautiful 17 year old daughter and gives her a painting from her mother, and the daughter tells him to not stay away for so long, seemingly not mad with him at all, for never having seen him, and having left her mother alone. And we see Hyun Woo trying to push away the ghost of Yoon-Hee who he also sees there.

••••

Now I did really enjoy the film up into the ending, but the fact that the daughter was so flippant over the father she had never seen before and who didn’t even admit to who he was, really threw me off. She says she was mad at her mom for leaving her, but now just missed her, but who wouldn’t be angry at their father, especially when he won’t even admit who he is.

Still I did love how the film was told and put together, more like a novel than a movie, and it really works.

A 60 year old man (Jeon Seong Hwan 전성환) lives on a boat and runs a fishing business as well as giving fortunes to his clients. He lives with a 17 year old girl (Han Yeo Reum 한여름) who helps him on the boat, and who he shoots at with arrows to do his fortune telling. The man plans on marrying the girl when she turns 18 in a short time. One group of passengers comes out with a young man (Seo Ji Seok 서지석) who is attracted to the girl and who she is also attracted too, and starts to pull her away from the old man, making a bitter jealousy.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

The boy returns a second time, having found the girls parents, who want their daughter back, who went missing when she was 7, and this old man has kept. Yes he treated her well, but not letting her leave, and washing her, and keeping her as basically a prisoner.

The boy plans on taking the young girl, but the old man gets out his boy, and is going to attack, but the girl finally stands up to him, and leaves with the young boy, going to have a real life.

••••

Again, really an enjoyable and well done film. I really enjoyed the acting, and the lack of dialogue to tell this story, so simple, but with so much depth of acting.

Baek Seong Chan [Han Seok-Kyu (한석규)] is a hot shot police inspector, who wants to quite and help run his friends exterminator business, but when a criminal uses his name to help steal a truck filled with money that belonged to a criminal Kim Hyeon Tae [Song Yeong-chang (송영창)] that he could never prosecute, he gets back in the game to take on the criminal. Baek gets a call from his transexual informant Antonio (Lee Byeong joon) about a gold shipment coming in. The cops follow the corrupt officials and smugglers, but the 4 criminals led by Ahn Heyon Min (Cha Seung Won) outsmart them, and get the money right out from under them. So they go back to lean on Antonio, and realize he was working with the criminals, but they threatened him, so he figured out that either way they would win. The cops do manage to figure out who the 3 lower criminals are though, and through them manage to figure out Ahn, who was the Warden and who met them in prison.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS...

The cops are onto the criminals, but they are ahead of them.

And the big criminal Kim Hyeon Tae is also on it, and has killed the officials and smugglers who betrayed him, using a former North Korean General who he uses as a strongarm.

Ahn, sets up for his 3 compatriots to get out of the country, but he stays, because he wants revenge on Kim for what he did to his father. And Baek realizes this. Ahn goes in to get Kim, but Kim has taken his friends, so he gives up the gold, and almost gets trapped, only getting saved by Baek, and Kim himself is killed in his own trap.

Baek himself ends up taking Ahn in, who he respects for helping his friend and for getting revenge for his father. Baek has also noticed an ambulance following him, and he lets Ahn go, to get in with his friends. When Baek returns to the police, he is now a suspect, because it turns out that most of the gold was fake and Baek was tricked.

The film ends with Baek working for an exterminator, when he gets a ticket in the mail from the Bahamas, where the criminals are waiting for him to join them.

••••

This film really didn’t come together for me, it seemed like big names with big egos, but the story was not too impressive for me.

Jeon Ji-hyeon (전지현) is Song Soo-jeong, a fast talking, chain smoking producer of feel good television pieces, who is willing to do anything for the shot, and whose hair is falling out to prove it. She hates people so bad, she wants to quite and go shoot in Africa, but that is spoiled, when one of the crew in Africa gets hits by a lion. She then meets a strange, and crazy man, who thinks he is Superman [Hwang Jeong-min (황정민)] who has lost his powers because of a piece of kryptonite implanted in his brain. He is obviously crazy, but he spends his time helping people, and befriending a small child. Soo-jeong starts to film Superman and his life, but she also starts to change.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

The Region 3 Disc is available at YesAsia.

After she has finished filming, she and her team go out and get drunk, but Superman shoes up at her place, and somehow manages to get in, and get her to go out, and she keeps filming him, though she already had enough footage. And eventually she befriends him enough, that he takes her to house in a an abandoned building where he plays with the small girl [Jin Ji-hee (진지희)] and has an incredible garden on his roof. She also sees he is having strange seizures that hurt him badly, and she gets him to a doctor, who sees something in his brain, though he freaks out not wanting to be in the hospital.

Eventually she manages to figure out who he was, a man who had been in a car accident with his family, and no one had helped and his wife and child had survived. She finds out which hospital he was in, and she tricks him and gets them to take him back in.

Quickly Soo-jeong finds out about Superman, who in fact as a child lost his father in the May 18th incident in Gwangju and was also shot in the head then by a sniper, and has had seizures since then, and been treated there, then after the accident he lost it.

At the hospital they put him on medication so that he quickly no longer feels emotion, and no longer cares, and no longer has a desire to help people, and he is able to be released, but is now a very different person, no longer wanting to help people. And Soo-jeong gets really depressed, because she has now rid the world of Superman.

Things don’t last well for him though, as he sees a mugging, and goes towards the woman who was stabbed and gets blood on his hands, and loses it, not helping the woman, and the police think he is a suspect, and want to gun him down, but are stopped by Soo-jeong, before he runs away.

There is then a car accident and a gas explosion, and Soo-jeong from her office recognizes the place, and rushes there, and finds a major accident, and the man is now Superman again, as he wants to run into the building, where his friend the small girl is trapped. Soo-jeong tries to stop him, because they both know he is not superman, but he goes anyway, first rescuing the mom, and then going back in for the little girl, but gets trapped by the fire. Finally he decides to jump with the little girl or they will both die.

We see Superman fly the little girl to the ground, and save the day, and Soo-jeong film him, and then he flies off, proving he is Superman, then we see reality, and he jumped and stopped the fall of the girl with his body, and she was saved. And he lays on the ground dyeing, but he sees the Kryptonite come out his head before he dies, so he dies smiling and happy.

And Soo-jeong is changed, as we see her help an old woman with her things at a train station, she no longer hates people or the world.

••••

A really good film, if quite sad. Well performed, written, directed and shot. A powerful and moving piece about how people no longer help anyone else, really one of the better films of the year. A must see all the way around.

So-Hwi (Sin Min-ah (신민아)) is a college student, who was trained by her martial artist father Cheon-poong (Lee Dae-geun (이대근)) in an ancient form of martial arts, and she was always considered a child prodigy, being almost indestructible, and able to run to school off building tops. She does a play at a school with the martial arts club, but no one claps, and after going drinking with the club, where she can drink 10 times as much as the others and not get drunk, and having to carry everyone home, she hears that all the people think she is a crazy freak, so against her fathers wishes she quits the club, and goes to try and join the hockey club, where she can try to get close to the motorcycle riding heartthrob Joon Mo (Yoo Geon (유건)). Meanwhile her father meets up with the other 4 Masters of the old school martial arts schools, to talk about the fact that the next competition is only for their children, and only one other master has a child, Il-yeong (On Joo-wan (온주완)) who only cares about motorcycles, and yet he was almost as amazing as So-hwo when he was a kid, and the two were close childhood friends. They try to bribe him to come back and train with So-Hwi for the competition, so he shows up at her school to try and convince her.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

The Region 3 disc is available at YesAsia.

Il-yeong has had a lifelong crush on her, so he doesn’t mind showing up every day to try and convince her and to see what is happening with her and Joon Mo.

She is meanwhile sharpening skates for the club, but Joon Mo is starting to suspect more, when she dodges a puck, and then breaks up a fight by throwing all the other players around as if they are china dolls, then saving Joon Mo in a gang fight, when he was trying to save a police woman, and So Hwi eventually joins the team as the hockey player, and starts to get closer to Joon Mo who is in love with an older police woman who saved him.

The second half changes gears completely into a Wuxia film, when an evil old master returns and starts challenging and killing off the masters. This guy who stole a famous sword, and has mastered a moon strike, and only a move of So-Hwi’s dead mom can stop it. Since So-Hwo the prodigy doesn’t want to do it, her father uses the mom’s martial arts book to try and learn the move, and goes to fight, but instead of the old master it turns out to be Il-yeong, who was brainwashed by the old master to fight for him, but the master died and he is still trapped. He originally got trapped because he and So=Hwo had stolen the sword and the man attacked them, and So-Hwi was poisoned, and he joined the man to get the potion, but he can’t talk about it, and can only scream mentally when it is happening, which So-Hwo can here.

With her father hospitalized after the fight, So-Hwo starts training, and gains the skill and goes to fight Il-yeong, but does not want to hurt him, and thus gets trapped, but she can hear him in her head, and her tears fall on the evil sword, and make a sound that allows him to break free. In the hospital he thinks he will tell her he loves her, and his father can hear him.

••••

Silly, and disjointed, but overall still pretty fun.

This is the story of a regional Crime Squad led by veteran detective Cho Day Young [Kim Myeong-min (김명민) Kim Myeong-min (김명민)] who is forced to oversee the investigation of an evil pickpocket ring, let by the beautiful Paik Jang mi [Son Ye-jin (손예진)] who have recently been terrorizing Tokyo, and stabbing anyone who tried to stop the robberies. Cho does not want to investigate pickpocketing because of something in his past, but he is forced too. When Jang mi is attacked by a rival pickpocket squad, Day-young just happens to be there, and saves her and beats up the crooks, leading them to an inevitable showdown.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILER….

Jang mi starts a new team in Korea, and starts moving into other territories and wants to take over, leading Day-young to start investigating her. Of course sparks fly between the two, and they even eventually have sex, and Jang-mi realizes that the woman she calls her aunt Kang Man-ok (Kim Hae-sook (김해숙)], who helped train her when her mother was killed is in actuality Dae-young’s mother, so she sets up a plot to get the old women back in the game and set her up to get caught by her son, so she can make her clean get away.

Things of course go bad, and Jang-mi’s knife man stabs Dae-yeong and his mother sees it and jumps in the way and is killed. The knife man and the rest of the team is also taken down, and the wounded Dae-yeong heads to the harbor where he knows Jang-mi will be leaving in a yaught and ends up shooting her in the head as she tries to get away, even though he loves her.

•••

A mediocre at best film. It looks good, but if pickpockets have gotten this evil I don’t want to go to Tokyo or Korea.

Ji-hwan [Cha Tae-hyeon (차태현) from My Sassy Girl] receives a mysterious letter in the mail with no return address, but is a photo of children playing, and it reminds him of his past, and particularly two women. We cut back 5 years to where Ji-hwan is a literature undergraduate working at a cafe whose favorite hobby is photography. He spots a gorgeous woman outside the window and instantly falls in love, and wants to photograph her, but her best friend walks in the way.. These girls are Soo-in [Son Ye-jin (손예진)] and her best friend Gyung-hee [Lee Eun-joo (이은주)]. Ji Hwan doesn’t say anything in time, so he awakens his friend who owns the cafe and runs on a bike after girls who are in a taxi. He manages to catch up and goes inside and professes his love to Soo-in (though it is obvious that Gyung-hee likes him). Soon-in tells him he is making her uncomfortable, so he leaves, but goes and buys a clock, and turns back the time by and hour and has a waiter give them a note, saying he wishes he could turn back time an hour, but hopes when they meet again, they can meet as best friends.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

The girls of course return to the cafe, and the 3 become fast friends, though Ji-hwan never learns their last names, or where they live, or even much about them, he is just happy to be with them. And they go to movies, and do everything together, getting closer and closer, and the two girls both start falling for Ji-hwan. Meanwhile Gyung-hee is becoming more depressed because she thinks that ji-hwan likes Soo-in more, but in fact he is slowly falling for Gyung-hee.

Gyung-hee nd Soo-in even fight because of their love for Ji-hwan, but Gyung-hee gives up, and the two sneak out from their parents to go on a road trip with Ji-hwan. They go out camping, and one one Soo-in wants to caress the sleeping Ji-hwan, and when he awakens he wants to kiss Gyung-hee. In the morning Ji-hwan goes out and finds Soo-in and they talk about their first loves, and Soo-in tells how she was often sick when she was young, and had to go to the hopsital and how she fell in love with a boy, and they traded names.

Out in the wilderness it starts raining, and Soo-in gets very cold and sick, so they bring her back to the hotel, and Ji-hwan and Gyung-hee sit out on the balcony, and she gets mad at him, but they then kiss.

They return to Seoul, but Soo-in is sick so Ji-hwan and Gyung-hee go out together, but they feel strange, and it doesn’t work out well. He then writes a letter to Soo-in telling her that he has fallen in love with Gyung-hee, and wants her to help him, but he gives it to Gyung-hee to give to Soo-in and she is so saddened by what she thinks it is, that she rips it up.

Gyung-he then visits Soo-in in intensive care, and gives Gyung-hee a letter to give to ji-hwan as her dialysis is not working and she is going to die. Gyung-he doesn’t know it, but the letter is for him to love Gyung-hee and take care of her when Soo-in is gone.

Soo-in goes to see Gyung-he one last time and tells him they aren’t comfortable with him anymore, and he greaks out and drinks and hurts his hand, but wakes up at home in his room with his hand bandaged.

We then cut to the present and Ji-hwan is trying to find the girls, and goes to their school to get their yearbook, and hears that Gyung-he is dead, and they were both very sick, and Soo-in has moved away to the country. He finally traces down the letter, which was being made, and put in a box, but sent by a bessotted mail man. Ji-hwan hears his name, and finds it is kids playing with a dog, and they lead him Gyung-hhee, now with long hair, and looking sick. It seems she is in fact Soo-in, and was the boy who traded names with Soo-in as a child (she just had short hair)

She gives Ji-hwan the ltter, which has tips to handle Gyung-hee. We then see Soo-in telling Gyung-hee that she loves her and then dieing, and then she became sicker and moved to the country.

Ji-hwan then gets a letter from Gyung-hee saying she tore up the letter from him to Soo-in, and thanks him for his kindess and passing on his love of photography to her, and for accepting his kiss, and she asks him to come to her funeral, and finally admits that she loves him and always had.

••••

Wow, how sad can they make it. Even when it turns out Gyung-hee is still alive she still doesn’t end up with the one who she loves, and who in fact loved her the whole time. They could have at least spent five years together. So sad. And well done too. It is such a shame that Lee Eun-joo killed herself, because she was so amazing in this film. So vibrant and alive.

Yeong-jae (Hwang Jeong-min 황정민) is an alcoholic chain smoking night club owner, who is just falling apart. His girlfriend Su-yeon (Kong Hyo-jin 공효진)) is sick of him, and leaves him when he tells her is leaving for overseas for a year or two. He sells his business to his best friend, also lies to his mother about going overseas, and then heads to a small town where there is a place called the Hotel Hope, which rehabilitates and helps sick people. He drinks some soju, and has a cigarette, pissing off a beautiful girl named Eun-hi (Im Soo-jeong 임수정). He then heads up to the rehab, but really doesn’t take it seriously, even though he has liver sorosis, though he still sneaks drinks and smokes. His roommate has lung cancer and snores. Slowly though he develops a relationship with the beautiful Eun-hi who has bad lungs, and can die from exertion. She slowly falls in love with him, and he likes her, and they end up moving in together in a small place outside of the facility, and living a small simple life, but he is not happy, while she is ecstatic, and wants him to promise to stay with her until she dies.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

The Region 3 Special Edition is gorgeous if a bit expensive.

Eun-hi is as happy as could be, and OK living a frugal life with the man she loves, but things go bad when Yeong-jae’s best friend comes with Su-yeon, and he decides he should head to Seoul to visit.

He goes and ends up sleeping with Su-yeon and staying with her, and is only planning to return to tell Eun-hi that he is leaving her, but he just can’t do it. Finally he gets himself real drunk and ruins Eun-hi’s life, and leaves her weeping by herself.

Yeong-jae returns to Seoul and Su-yeon, and drinking like a mad man, and smoking. And his recovery is no longer working. And his life is miserable. He fucks around with his best friends girl and loses his job as a night club manager, and then leaves Su-yeon again and lives in a cheap place, but starts couching blood again, and ends up in the hospital.

The woman who runs the rehab facility comes to get him and tell him Eun-hi is dyeing, and he goes to her, and spends her last minutes with her, but not at all as he promised, and finally he returns again to the Hotel Hope to hopefully turn around his life.

••••

Im Soo-jeong from I’m a Cyborg and a Tale of Two Sisters is fantastic, and Hwang Jeong-min is great as an absolute evil cad, but the fact he is so damn bad just makes me not like him, and not care even if he reforms at the end. He didn’t do what was right when it counted, and that says it all.

In 1980 a Korean General Chun Doo-hwan declared Martial law in South Korea, and he sent the armed forces around the country to set up in all the universities to put down any so called revolutionaries who would protest. We meet a taxie driver named Min-woo (Kim Sang-kyeong 김상경 from Memories of Murder) who hangs with his best friend a loud taxi driver, and takes care of his high school student brother named Jin-woo (Lee Joon-ki 이준기). Min-woo pines for a local nurse named Shin-ae (Lee Yo-won 이요원) who goes to church with Jin-woo, and whose father is an military commander named Heung-su (Ahn Seong-gi 안성기) who also happens to be Min-woo’s boss. Min-woo figures out a plan to get Shin-ae to go the movies with him by using Jin-woo to get her to go, but outside the students are protesting, and the military starts using deadly force, and when the theater gets smoke grenades coming into, they go outside, and the military turns on them, and they barely manage to get away. The militaries use of lethal force, and the fact that they are indiscriminate in their violence, attacking anyone who is out and in front of them, turns the people against the military, and they all start to go out and protest.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

The Region 3 Special Edition DVD with 3 discs and a booklet and some postcards. Damn Korean’s know hot to make very nice and special dvd cases!!

Life tries to go on in the town, but the hospital is nuts, and Min-woo starts driving Shin-ae to and from work because of the army, but when he is driving around, he runs into a protest, and ends up helping some wounded people, so he gets grabbed and taken away in a truck, but when the army starts beating their prisoners, he attacks and jumps off into the river, and escapes in a hail of bullets, going to the hospital and getting stitched up by Shin-ae.

When a student at the school is killed, Jin-woo leads the other students in a protest march across the city, and the people start protesting too. Min-woo sees his brother and tries to stop them, but they hear the army will be leaving, and all close in on the town hall, the whole city coming out. Right at noon, when it is rumored the army will leave, instead of leaving, the army steps into position and opens fire on the civilians. May people are killed, and Jin-woo is shot trying to save someone. Min-woo goes mad, but Hueng-su comes out and saves them so Min-woo can take his brother to the hospital, but there he dies, and Min-woo loses it, and heads over to break into the town arsenal, and arm the populace against the military. And when a doctor goes out to help the wounded with Shin-ae, the army opens fire and kills the doctor, and Min-woo barely saved Shin-ae, and they run, but a soldier comes and attacks, and is going to kill Min-woo but Shin-ae grabs a rifle and kills the soldier.

Heung-su ends up taking the 50 caliber and firing at the town hall, causing the army to fall back, but of course that means they will come back.

The army returns with tanks, so Min-woo sends them a box of dynamite, to keep them away, but ups the ante. Heung-su goes an talks to the army, but they want all out surrender and to arrest everyone involved, so the people will fight back. They set up in town hall, and many people come out. When Heung-su learns that Min-woo and Shin-ae are dating he wants them both to leave together, so his daughter won’t be alone when this is done, and they leave, but Min-woo decides he can’t do it, and goes back to help Heung-su, leaving Shin-ae alone to ride around and use a loudspeaker to rally the people.

The military comes in full force, and basically kills everyone. Heung-su tries to get Min-woo to escape, but he runs into the army, and when they call him a traitor, he yells that they are not traitors and raises his gun, and is killed as well.

And we learn there are least 200 official deaths, and over 900 missing people. What a disaster and a mess, and so recently in Korean history.

••••

I am glad to see this film, because I knew nothing of these events, and such recent history should really be taught and shown. A gorgeous film, and with great performances all the way around.

A woman named Se-heui (Park Ji-yeon 박지연) runs into a woman just out of a Plastic Surgery place, with her face covered and large sunglasses on. Se-heui knocks a photo out of her hands and breaks the glass, so she grabs it and says she will get it fixed, but the woman walked off. Se-heui then goes with the repaired photograph of a crazy looking or maybe mentally disturbed image to see her boyfriend Ji-woo (Ha Jeong-woo 하정우) at a coffee shop. Se-heui is incensed because Ji-woo was looking at a waitress there, then another woman runs into his car, and he goes outside and sees there is no damage and gets her card, and again Se-heui freaks out and she runs off. Ji-woo returns home to find her in bed, and has sex with him, but she tells him to pretend she is the car girl, because she wants to be fresh to him, because must be bored with seeing the same body for 2 years. The next day Se-heui goes back to the Plastic Surgeon, and decides to become someone else, and after the surgery, she just disappears without a trace from Ji-woo’s life.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Ji-woo is really depressed, and doesn’t want to see anyone else, but his friends keep dragging him out on blind dates. Then he meets an old photographer friend who seems to want him, and he agrees to date her, but she goes to the bathroom and sees something or someone and immediately leaves him, and won’t talk to him.

Ji-woo then goes on a ferry to go to a sculpture park that he used to go with Se-heui with. He sees a girl in bandages and glasses, who also goes to the park, but then she disappears.

Ji-woo then meets Sae-heui (Seong Hyeon-ah 성현아 who is now a waitress at the same coffee shop, and is in fact Se-heui post plastic surgery.

Slowly the two start to date and fall in love, going to the park and taking new photos. Eventually though Sae-heui then starts sending Ji-woo letters from Se-heui, saying she will be coming back, and then freaking out when Ji-woo wants to see her, even though she is Se-heui. When he finds out the truth, he freaks out, but he does love her, in fact he loves both women who are his girlfriend, in fact he loves her so much that he goes to the plastic surgeon and decides to get a new identity, just as Se-heui did.

Now it is Sae-heui who is missing her boyfriend, and she thinks she his everywhere, and ends up being with different men that she thinks are him, but they aren’t. And finally at a train station she loses it, screaming for him, and she sees someone run, and she runs after him, but he turns a corner and is run over by a truck and killed, his face mangled, and she loses it. Sae-hui returns to the plastic surgeon all covered in blood, and he asks her if she would like to completely change again, and she gets plastic surgery again, and leaves carrying a photo and runs into Se-heui and drops her frame and takes off, it seems she caused her own obsession with the plastic surgery.

•••

A good movie, but with some seriously crazy characters, the girlfriend is not stable at all, and the guy loses it completely as well. Wow these people are insane. It is worth checking out, but really damn messed up.

Imperial nurse Chun-ryung [Park Jin-hee (박진희)] illegally had a baby while working in the palace, when you must stay as a virgin, but she snuck off into the woods and abandoned the baby, returning to her life in the palace. Then maid Wol-ryung [Seo Yeong-hee (서영희)] is found hung, Chun-ryung looks after the body, and she realizes that the woman was dead before she was hung. The body was found by another maid Jeong-ryul [Jeon Hye-jin (전혜진)] who stole a jewel off the body when she found it. Chun-ryung believes it is a cover up, and wants to find out the truth, but everyone else seems against her. Especially the house of the royal concubine Hee-bin [Yoon Se-ah (윤세아)], who has had the only male heir to the Emperor, much to the chagrin to the empress.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS...

Chun-ryung keeps the investigation going, as she knows it has to have something to do with the nephew of the king [Kim Nam-jin (김남진)] who was the one who got her pregnant and then abandoned her as soon as she was pregnant, which is a death sentence for a maid in the palace.

More deaths start to happen, and a strange black cloud comes and kills people in the palace.

Eventually through a long and convoluted plot, we find that the concubine is not the mother of the child, it is fact the maid’s Wol-ryung, who also turns out to be the sister of the concubine. There is also another plot with a mute maid, who was also seduced by the nephew of the kind, and he chases down Chun-Ryung, but falls and is taken by the black mist.

Eventually we learn that it was the head maid of the concubine who killed the maid in order to cover up the sons patronage.

They have the annual maid ceremony where maids are punished, and an innocent maid is to have her hands cut off, but in fact it is the old woman, who was switched for the other maid. And it turns out the Concubine has been infected by whatever mysterious force, and she saves her son, and also saves Chun-ryung who tells nothing of what she learned and becomes the maid of the King to be.

•••

The film is gorgeous and could have been good, if they had left out the supernatural element and just made it about the life of these maids and how horrible their lives actually are. This all got lost in the supernatural elements that were never explained though.

At a huge department store named Dreampia in Seoul there was a huge fire the year before under unusual circumstances, and they are now working to re-open the store on time and restore money to the stock holders. A woman named Choi Mi Jeng (Lee Yeong Jin 이영진) steals a MP3 for her friends birthday, and also a pizza cutter, then her image in the mirror uses the pizza cutter to slice her throat, though it is deemed a suicide. Now we meet Yong-min (Yoo Ji-tae 유지태) a former police inspector, who had some accident where he caused his partner to be shot, and is no longer a police, but works for his uncle as security at Dreampia. Then another worker has an apparent suicide by shoving a pen into his ear, and the actual police are brought in to check the possible serial killer. A former colleague of his is brought in, his name is Hyeon-su (Kim Myeong-min (김명민) who has nothing but contempt for Yong Min. The security director gives Yong Min a gun and tells him to investigate on his own. Yong-min finds that there was a single employee death in the fire, and the rest of the people in her department are the ones who are dying, including one who quite and is going insane in his apartment, bouncing like a mad man.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Yong-min finds that the the women who died in the fire has a twin sister named Lee Ji-heyon (Kim Myeong-min 김명민) who is hiding in the department store, and searching for her sister in the mirrors there. Yong-min tries to convince Hyeon-su, but he won’t listen, and wants to arrest Lee Ji-Hyeon for the murders.

Eventually the last employee is killed with Yong-min’s gun, so he is arrested, but Hyeon-su has started to believe, even though it may cost him his promotion. We learn that Yong-min in fact shot a mirror image instead of the killer, which caused his partner to be killed, but the mortician saw the bullet in the killer’s mirror image.

Yong-mi gets out and with ji Heyon head to the department store and start smashing mirrors and find her sisters body behind a mirror, and then the security director who has plotted to take over the store comes out. He killed her because he was using the department to betray the store, and she betrayed him, so he killed her, and she has been killing the people who betrayed her.

Yong-min is shot, but manages to save Ji-heyon, but in the hospital things are strange, even mirrored, and we realize that in fact in the real world he died, but his mirror image lives on.

••••

An interesting twist on parallel worlds, and the worlds within. Not always successful, but fairly enjoyable overall.

Han Mi (Han Ji Hye 한지혜) is a beautiful college student who wants to find love. The one she meets is the loser Young Bin (Lee Dong Geon 이동건) who lives out of a Sauna, dumps girls for no reason, and has an expensive car, but no job. The meet by chance when she accidentally texts him, and then they run into each other as she gets off a bus, and their phones gets switched and hers gets broken, and she tries to steal his. Her roommate and cousin Chae Young (Shin ee 신이) runs a dating agency that runs on blood type, and she hates type B, which is of course what Young Bin is, while Han Mi is a nice A. So she tries to keep them apart, but Han Mi will have nothing of it.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Young Bin has no money, and no place, and even takes Han Mi’s credit card and uses it without saying anything. He also borrows her place for when his father (Baek Il seob 백일섭) comes to town, making Han Mi stay up late and not study for her midterm.

When Young Bin gets his bills paid for by a friend (Yoo Tae Woong 유태웅) in exchange for a date with Han Mi she finally has had enough, and breaks it off with him.

Young Bin realizes he was wrong, and manages to win Han Mi back.

••••

The problem is that Young Bin can be galant, but mostly he is just an ass, and Han Mi deserves better than this asshole.

The first story involves Hanna (Son Tae-yeong 손태영) who is a guest lecturer at a university, and is having an affair with the full time professor (Baek Jong-hak 백종학). It turns out they met in college, when he was a graduate and she was a Freshmen, and then he went to Germany to study, and she did too, and they were together until he returned to Korea and got married, and she had to stay in Germany to finish her degree. The second story is of a subway driver named Man-soo (Kim Kang-woo 김강우) who works like mad, and has a strange and beautiful girl (Cha Seo-won 차서원) come and deliver him a magazine and coffee and a pastry and magazine once a month, though she strangely knows his schedule, and he knows nothing about her.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

The two in the present are both on a train, she drunk, and he asleep, and they both go too far and end up at the end of the line with no place to stay in a snow storm, so they must walk to try and find a hotel. We eventually find out the whole story of each.

Hanna in fact got pregnant from the Professor, but had a miscarriage in Germany. And she planned a special trip with him for her birthday, but the wife found out and attacked her. And the Professor did not leave his wife when she found out, but instead lied and kept the marriage going, so Hanna realized it was over.

Man Soo was on leave because the beautiful girl had a limp he did not know about, and she suicided into his train, dyeing in front of him. And he was on leave trying to figure things out. The two comfort each other in the hotel.

We cut to a year later, and Hanna has now released a book, though it isn’t selling too well. And she and her friend ride on a train, and it is Man-soo driving it, and he makes an announcement, and she knows he went back to work.

••••

An interesting experiment and partially successful. And damn if Son Tae-Yeong isn’t gorgeous, and a pretty damn good actress.

Shin Ae (Jeon Do Yeon 전도연) is moving the the city of Mil Yang with her small son Jun (Seong Jeong Yeob) from Seoul after her cheating husband was killed in an automobile accident, but their car breaks down on the way, and they get a mechanic Kim Jong Chan (Song Gang Ho 송강호) to help them. Shin Ae opens a piano school, and Jon Chan does everything he can to get her business and help her, as he is obviously interested in her. Shin Ae meanwhile meets various people, including the christian pharmacists across the way who want her to join their church. Shin Ae keeps talking about how she wants to buy land and invest and Jong Chan tries to help her, introducing her to people, but when she starts making friends, she spends one night out with other ladies from the town, and returns home to find Jun is missing. She gets a call to get all her money and leave it, but she does, and it is not enough, because she was lying about the investing, because she wanted to pretend she had money. The son is then found murdered, and she is crushed. Then she sees the delinquent daughter of the school bus driver (Jo Yeeong Jin 조영진) crying and looking into her store, she calls the police, and the girls father is caught and put in prison for the murder. Shin Ae is followed around by Jong Chan, and goes to a church meeting, and quickly finds god.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Shin Ae becomes a true believer, and finds happiness, or at least she pretends to, as she is still miserable. And Jong Chan followers her, and goes to church because he likes her. She becomes more and more religious, being very friendly all the other church goers, until finally she decides she is going to go to prison and forgive the murderer of the her son, and of course Jong Chan goes along as well. THings seem to go well, as he has found god and been forgiven, but that pushes Shin Ae over the deep end, and she loses her faith in god as how could he have forgiven the killer and left him in piece when she is in so much pain. She just freaks out, and to test god, she goes and tries to seduce the old pharmacist, but he can’t get it up, and she misses a dinner date with Jong Chan which was for his birthday, but goes to his place and says she will sleep with him, but he freaks out and kicks her out.

Shin Ae goes home, and looks up talking to god, asking if he is watching as she cuts her own wrists, but wanders outside and is taken to a hospital.

When she is let out, of course Jong Chan goes to get her, and she wants a haircut on the way, so he takes her to a salon, but it is the daughter of the murdered who is there, and who is supposed to cut her hair, so Shin Ae freaks out and leaves after the cut is started, screaming at Jong Chan and heading home, to cut her own chair, when Jong Chan comes and holds the mirror for her, so she can cut her own hair.

••••

A lovely and powerful film with great performances. This is an absolute must see film. And she was very deserving of the the award at Cannes.