Korean Films Test Taboos
by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 6 Nov 2007 at 4:24 PM
updated Tue, 6 Nov 2007 at 4:38 PM
If the recent London Film Festival — in its 51st edition, the glitziest, most exciting to date — didn't convey London's new cinematic preeminence, then the success of the less mainstream film festivals immediately following it should. A city that can sleekly absorb and promote a season as unusual as the Korean film festival (and, less obscurely, the U.K. Jewish Film Festival) is one that is confident in its interest in cinema and its capabilities as a host. New York has been doing it for years — London is just beginning.
This is London's second round of the festival (a collaboration between the Korean Culture Center and the Korean Culture and Content Agency), which got off to a strong start last year with relatively high-profile screenings of Ki-Duk Kim's critically adored "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring" (2003) and Chan-wook Park's "Oldboy" (2003), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004. But, the festival's coordinator, Jason Bechervaise, says, films that do well in Britain don't necessarily go down well in South Korea. Ki-duk Kim, whose films, according to Mr. Bechervaise, helped spark the U.K.'s interest in Korean film, is loathed in Korea. He is considered "controversial, weird, and crazy," favoring shocking violence and sexual explicitness, most famously in "The Isle" (2000).
This year the big deals are the sold-out "I'm a Cyborg But That's OK" from Chan-wook Park, about a love affair between pretty young residents at a Korean mental hospital, and "War of the Flower," directed by Dong-hun Choi, about a gambler who loses all his money and sets about learning how to win it back.
So what is it about Korean movies that are drawing the crowds? "These are sophisticated films," says Mr. Bechervaise. "They are classy and sleek, based on clever and effective ideas. There is a great interest in massaging taboos." Themes that recur are loyalty, family, and hierarchy — pillars of what is still a relatively conservative culture. Still, such ideas have major pulling power here — the crowds at the festival have been a thorough mixture, with lots of Japanese, Chinese, as well as English and Korean viewers.
London Korean Film Festival
http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/series.asp?id=467
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