Samaritan Girl

I had the chance of watching this movie at the Montreal World Film Festival. This is the third Korean movie I've seen ('Oasis' and 'Spring Summer...' being the other 2)and believe me, these guys know how to make good cinema.

This movie deals with juvenile prostitution and its consequences. How would you react if you found out that your 15 year old daughter prostitutes herself after school? This powerful movie has excellent acting and some great silent scenes, such as eating sushi at the grave and the driving lesson. The ending is of a great beauty.

Very good movie. 8/10

This is undeniably a work of considerable formal rigor. Director Kim Ki-Duk uses deceptively simple but tellingly precise visual compositions to narrate his seemingly simple tale of loss of innocence, guilt and redemption. Initially everything seems transparent and self-evident in the story until intangible elements slowly seep into the structure causing ambiguity and bringing emotional turmoil that remains mostly subdued. The main plot premise, however, might seem a bit exaggerated or overblown to someone who cannot easily accept the depicted motivations for the actions of the two main characters (the girl and its father), especially considering the scarcity of social or psychological signifiers. Consequently, the movie works better on a symbolic than dramatic level, as its wonderfully concise final scene demonstrates. A must see.

Director Kim Ki-Duk gives us insight about teenage prostitution in Korea, but is this really a movie about prostitution? Looking deeper than the visual settings, I found that the movie hits more emotionally about relationships, between friends and family. The movie is basically broken into two parts. Part one is about Jae-Young, an amateur prostitute and her best friend Yeo-Jin, her manager. The second part is about Yeo-Jin and her father. Each part has its tense moments, and the director, pretty much does a good job telling the story and showing the audience: tragedy and closeness. There's not a lot of sex or violence like typical prostitution movies, but then again it is not about prostitution, it only uses it as a medium to get the point across. Happy viewing!

In "Samaria" a Korean girl takes the holy assignment of devoting herself voluntarily to the suitors of her dead school friend. Her father, a police man, finds it out and takes revenge at the men.

It is a film about charity, guilt, and the search for the right way, that gets near to the crassness of Kim's earlier work "Seom - The Isle" (2000) and "Bad Guy" (2001). The story is carried away by the director's typical big calm - a distance to the excitement, that is never cold and opens a breathtaking endearment even in the cruelest moments. "Samaria" is full of intensive scenes, a film you rather realize than understand: It hides its secrets and puts up a father-daughter-relationship-story under the shelter of metaphysical aspects. Great coherence flows out of every image, every tone. A film of godforsakeness and full of hope.

Masterpiece! Watch it!

Will I ever see a Kim Ki-duk film I don't like? That's looking doubtful, now that I've watched SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, WINTER...AND SPRING, THE ISLE, and BAD GUY, and loved all of them. Like Herzog, he's an art-house director who really appeals me in the way he deals with dark and dismal themes that would be grim in the hands of a normal director but feel somehow oddly uplifting when he tackles the material. Perhaps it's because his films are so beautifully shot, I don't know.

SAMARITAN GIRL sees the director returning to the subject of prostitution after the unforgettable BAD GUY. A couple of teenage girls make extra cash by hooking, until tragedy strikes. What follows is almost impossible to predict, as the story has an episodic structure, although the vigilante bit is undoubtedly my favourite part: ferocious, powerhouse film-making. As is usual for a Kim Ki-duk film, the acting is exemplary and the mood sombre and moving; this is an expose of the human condition, warts and all, for better or worse, and it contains a level of raw emotion that few directors achieve. The ending is excellent in its sense of quiet, contemplative reflection.