The Scarlet Letter 주홍글씨 by Daniel H. Byun (2004)
20 May 2006Hmm, I don’t know what to say exactly about this film. It is not what I thought it would be or what it sets itself up to be, and the twist at the end doesn’t really make any sense to the story, and the police story isn’t intriguing and ends really horrible. Much of the acting is also very sub par, with the exception Lee Eun Ju who is the highlight of the film, though it is so depressing that this was her last role because she committed suicide not too long ago, some say she was depressed by what she had done in this film, and while it is a very sexual role she doesn’t ever show anything. Really the police story is totally superfluous and takes up way too much screen time for the ending. It is an interesting watch but not really a good film.
The film starts as a murder investigation, where an unhappy wife Kyung Hee (Seong Hyeon-ah (성현아)) walked in on a discovered her husband bludgeoned to death in their photography studio. The police captain on the case is Ki Hoon (Han Seok-Kyu (한석규) from Shiri) and he immediately suspects the wife of the murder, and that is further confirmed when she is seeing paying off a young thug, but really that isn’t the storyline.
The story is about Ki Hoon and his pregnant wife Su Hyun (Eom Ji-won (엄지원)n) who is a cellist, and doesn’t show much emotion, and his girlfriend Ka Hee (Lee Eun-joo (이은주)) who is a jazz musician and singer who went to school with Su Hyun. To complicate things Ka Hee is also pregnant, and Ki Hoon can’t decide who he wants to be with, he is loyal to his wife because “she loves him”, but wants to have constant sex with Ka Hee.
REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS…
The thug is arrested for the crime, as he confessed to it to his wife, though there is some question to the time of death because he was in a movie when the guy actually died.
Eventually Su Hyun confronts Ka Hee, and then catches Ki Hoon coming to Ka Hee’s place, so she wants a divorce. Ki Hoon goes driving with Ka Hee seemingly to break up with her, but it is her birthday and they end up locked in the car trunk, and unable to get out, even with his gun, which ends up wounding his face. And then she starts bleeding having lost her kid, and eventually convinces him to kill her, but not until she tells him the truth.
The truth, which comes completely out of left field is that Su Hyun and Ka Hee were lovers in music school, and loved each other deeply, and Ka Hee knew Ki Hoon from high school, and they started seeing each other, but Ki Hoon fell for Su Hyun and married her, though she only married him so she could try and keep Ka Hee, which didn’t work because Ka Hee had fallen for Ki Hoon.
So Ki Hoon shoots Ka Hee and is found 2 days later in the car trunk out of his mind and completely covered in blood, but he tells them that Ka Hee killed herself.
For the ending Ki Hoon visits Kyung Hee at her studio that she is selling, and he has left the force. He talks to her about how she actually killed the guy, the thug started it, but the husband was still alive when she got to the studio, and she bludgeoned him. Ki Hoon asks Kyung Hee if she loved him, and she responds that is it OK if she loved him, and he leaves. The end.
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Hmm, screwed up movie. And what was up with the lesbian twist? Did Daniel H. Byun just want to make these actresses make out on film? And why the lame police investigation, which doesn’t really go anywhere? Lee Eun Ju is really the highlight of this film, as you really believe her love for Ki Hoon, and how much she does not want to lose him, no matter what (though that really doesn’t make sense with the lesbian story, especially since they both think that they initiated the relationship).
Interesting but not successful.
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