Haepi-endeu

I only recently realized that Jung Ji-woo also did the kdrama series Somebody... I can certainly see where the tendency to plot twist and surprising endings came from. Another similarity, I guess, is the sexually explicit nature of the work, and the way the sex was actually instrumental in conveying something about the atmosphere that would have been hard to show in other ways. In other words, this is really not a situation where the sex was instrumental or there for fan service purposes, in my opinion: it was part of the characterization. Not as central as in a movie like Lust, Caution, but still... not gratuitous, contrary to other comments I had read.

The female actress playing ML's wife was extraordinary in her versatility: I saw her in other roles, she was pretty incredible in how varied the characters she interpreted were. The actor playing the husband was also incredible. I mean, when I have seen him in Old Boy I was stunned to see the difference, that was definitely impressive. The same could be said about the actor playing the lover.

This was an exceptional cast, and the director was also the guy that directed Somebody, which was one of my favorite dramas... talk about not knowing what you were going to get until the very and, and the writer/director pulling off a surprise ending.

This was really a top example of the genre, the genre being "amour noir". It knows its tropes and plays with them, and subverts them when it wants to. In some sense, there is a sense of inevitability as in a Greek tragedy, in another sense one doubts the realism of the conclusion and feels that the events came a bit out of left fields given characterization and stated goals, and that they were basically bent into the plot for the sake of shock value... but none of that really detracts from the work's value as a genre film, so it gets full marks in that respect, as far as I am concerned. Well done to the director and actors, not an easy movie.

This film has all the ingredients to be miysogynistic and that's one of the possible readings. And it's quite legitimate. But, in fact, it seems to be more about mysoginy and the consequence of misogynistic behaviour and its consequences. Not advocating them. Nobody gets what deserves in this one and there are more victims (but one of them is being that absolutely and more than others). But what seems to be some morale here is that after the act there's just no way back. Either you get your life broken or, even worse, you don't get even that. I watch a lot of Asian films latelly and most of them look like statements about gender antagonisms. And mostly, their outcome on the end is unpopular and brave. And out there for everyone to see what it looks like when you don't paint them in unrealistic colors. As it should be. This film has a dreadful conclusion but it must be seen for what it is. That's why it's good ...

Pretty insane to think that FL's actress was the same person that recently did Crash Course in Romance. ML's actor was in Old Boy, as well. This was a very solid movie in the "romance noir" genre, apparently. I have to say that I was glad not to have seen the poster, because that would have kind of ruined the surprise, whereas while watching the movie I was able to really be "fooled" by the writer's plot.

I really liked the movie stylistically, great attention to details. Though we didn't get flashbacks explaining what happened in the past, everything was hinted at as if we found ourselves "in the middle of things", to create the ambience.