Thirst

To continue the Park Chan-wook theme here: a review of his latest (and in my humble opinion, best) film. Ever since Oldboy, the Korean auteur’s films have been cause for excitement and rabid anticipation amongst us film nerds with strong stomachs. This was—and is—the case with Thirst as well, heightened by the fact that the world is currently undergoing a resurge of the vampire craze in a big way. I’m happy to report that, if absolutely nothing else, this is indeed a damn awesome vampire movie.

That in itself is the best thing about Thirst. For all its tangents and Catholic-guilt overtones (our leading man is a priest-turned-creature of the night played by Song Kang-ho), the movie is dripping with thrills, sex, and humour. I would go so far as to say it’s more comedy than drama, in fact, which is something the trailers and synopsis’ give no indication of. Considering Park’s last full-length, I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Okay was too light and the Sympathy films that flanked Oldboy were bogged down by their over-ambitiousness, Thirst’s perfect balance feels all the more remarkable. At two and a half hours, it’s not exactly a tight little package, but it uses the time perfectly and never once loses its way.

The aforementioned priest, Sang-hyeon, contracts vamp blood when trying to do some good by volunteering for a medical experiment to cure the EV virus, which manifests in skin boils and vomiting of blood, and eventually death. He’s the only one to survive the experiment because of the circumstances, which makes him a mythic, local hero that the townsfolk worship. Unfortunately, it seems the only way to keep the EV virus (and accompanying skin boils) at bay is to continue to drink human blood and avoid the sun. Loathe to kill anyone—that’s right, he’s one of those tortured vampires ala Angel, or Edward Cullen—Sang-hyeon feeds his “disease” in various amusing ways, including from the IV of a coma patient (his defence of this is that the man “loved to help the hungry!”). The movie gets a lot of mileage out of gags like this, or ones involving the superhuman strength inherited by vampires. You’d be surprised how many times a person carrying/throwing an obscenely heavy object, or snapping a broken bone back into place nonchalantly, can continue to be hilarious.

Soon enough, Sang-hyeon meets up with a buffoonish childhood friend and finds himself lusting after his wife, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin). This is when things really kick off, and their relationship has to be one of the most delightful to watch in the genre, thanks in no small part to Kim. Her Tae-ju is so joyously evil, unapologetic and cunning, I could have continued to watch her wreak havoc for another couple of hours and not complained. Thirst is mostly just episodes of the pair gallivanting, Sang-hyeon trying to keep his Frankenstein in check, and Tae-ju always threatening to go just a little bit more off the rails than she already is. Buckets of blood later, is an absolutely stellar ending that’s funny, sad, and sweet all at once.

If you’re expecting a quiet meditation on the repressive nature of the Catholic religion, look elsewhere. By the same token, it’s not a scary movie either. The villains are our heroes, and we’re encouraged to laugh and clap along, gleefully—not be terrified by them. Bottom line, if you get a kick out of this sort of thing, you’ll have a rough time finding a movie that does it as pitch-perfectly as this one. See it on the big screen, if you can.

Simpan ("Judgement")

After seeing Park Chan-wook’s third film Simpan, I asked myself “What am I to take from this?” I didn’t have an answer that satisfied me. Or more to the point: one that satisfied what I had just seen. So what can I point to or parse that will do the explaining for me? Well, the film is as dynamic a film as I’ve ever seen; what does a family do in the face of being let down by a communal promise, and to what lengths would or should they go to find security? What would one’s responsibility and/or duty be when confronted with an opportunity for security? When does one stand up regardless of consequence? Chan-wook asks all these questions and more during his 26-minute human drama in which a family is summoned to a morgue under the most horrible of circumstances. A couple is called upon to view and identify someone who has been determined to be a long since runaway child killed during a general state of societal unrest. As it happens, there isn’t foul play involved as far as one can tell, yet a media representative and his cameraman, who are presumably documenting the unrest, join the aforementioned couple and the mortician (played by veteran actor and R-Point player Gi Ju-bong) for the determination.

The general unrest outside the confines of the morgue soon finds its way inside as the nameless mortician becomes distressed that the dead woman may in fact be his own missing daughter; an official soon arrives to our new world in an attempt to clear the matter up, but sides are taken and tempers flare. I’ll refrain from detailing the remainder of the story, but suffice it to say, Chan-wook resolves the issue in stunning fashion; with a bizarre blow then a profound portrait of humanism.

In the end, Simpan (loosely, “Judgement” – quite possibly closer to “arbiter”) impressed upon me that this may have been born as a Chan-wook original play, made for stage, then adapted (obviously) because the movements are so precise, economy of motion so observed that most of the dialogue dissipated afterward. I recall thinking the same thing after seeing Park Chan-wook’s Three…Extremes segment “Cut”. An unusual thing to say, I know, then again I was one of the few who actually liked Cut.

Watch Simpan here.

The Maid

As a horror movie, The Maid is above-average--beautifully shot and crisply edited, but only scary per se in isolated moments, more makes-you-jump than gets-under-your-skin. Some of the film's creepier scenes turn out to be dreams, too, an overused trick that stifles momentum and adds less "psychological depth" than the filmmaker presumably intends. The acting is efficient yet pretty much uniformly one-note, and the film's depiction (and the twisty narrative's use) of a mentally challenged man nervously straddles the lines of good taste.

As a purposefully moody look at the pleasures and difficulties of adjusting to life in a foreign nation, this 2005 effort by Kelvin Tong (coincidentally, the auteur responsible for the last film I opined on here at Gold Lion) has plenty of interesting ideas. Centering on Rosa, a young Filipino woman who moves to Singapore to work as a maid for the Teo family, Tong's film understands the numerous hurdles in the way of assimilation in a way few contemporary films have evidenced. As Rosa slaves away under the strict, watchful eye of Mrs. Teo, she learns via letter that her younger brother has grown very ill. When the Teo's not only advance Rosa a month's salary to send back home but (with a major condition I won't reveal here) offer to help bring her brother to Singapore and pay for superior medical care, the pressure of the situation is subsequently intensified (call it the horror of being painfully, unenviably stuck).

Meanwhile, it's the Chinese seventh lunar month, or "hungry ghost month"--a superstition that Rosa doesn't initially understand but, of course, comes to understand. This premise only goes so far scare-wise and the territory Tong treads with it isn't necessarily new, but it does tie in effectively with his theme of alienation in a strange land. And when the trap-door drops out and The Maid checks the box for requisite late twists, it thankfully doesn't get overly convoluted or far-fetched with its "gotcha"'s. Sure, it could've wrapped up quite nicely as a fine, atmospheric social drama/ghost story without employing any third-act surprises--a statement that applies to so many products of this genre, Asian or otherwise--but, unlike a lot of horror flicks, Tong's doesn't unravel so much that it starts to reverse any goodwill it's earned. If that sounds like faint praise, you probably haven't watched enough horror movies over the past ten years.