nwasianweekly.com
May 31, 2008

Image provided by New Yorker Films

(From left) Kim Tae-woo as Won Chang-wook, Kim Seung-woo as Kim Joong-rae and Ko Hyun-joung as Kim Moon-sook in the Korean movie "Woman on the Beach."

Movie lacks redemption, in a good way

By N.P. Thompson

Northwest Asian Weekly

A year after playing at SIFF, South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo's "Woman on the Beach" returns to Seattle for a one-week engagement. And it's well worth carving a couple of hours out of your current festival-going to catch. This perceptive comedy of bad manners, in which a "sensitive artist" outs himself as a conniving neurotic prig, absolutely towers over most of the entries in this year's SIFF, Asian or otherwise.

The movie follows a swaggeringly sexual filmmaker, Kim Joong-rae, who takes off for the weekend to Shinduri Beach, supposedly to draw inspiration for his latest pretentious project, to be called "About Miracles," concerning a man who spends 10 years trying to figure out where that Mozart music in the elevator is coming from.

Along for the ride are Chang-wook, a worshipful acolyte who always addresses Joong-rae (to sweetly ludicrous effect) as "director Kim", and Chang-wook's luminous date Moon-sook. Joong-rae wastes no time in trying to come between them: "Chang-wook, I admire you. … It's hard for a married man to openly bring along his girlfriend. … You must really trust me."

In the realm of compliments that double as insults, Joong-rae establishes who's-who in his flirtation with Moon-sook, by offering this praise for her musical endeavors: "You sung how an average person would. I liked that amateur feel to it." Over the course of the weekend, the one-upmanship grows grittier, even as Hong's style remains softly aloof.

Sharing drinks with the men in their hotel room, Moon-sook reveals that she lived in Germany for awhile, which sets Joong-rae off on this bellicose spiral: "Yeah, they love Asian women. They just go crazy about them. Even if the women are ugly. … Unpopular women here are considered pretty over there. You have to live where you were born, whether you're ugly or not. Why do unpopular girls here go over there to live comfortably?" and then he hedges his bets by adding, "But I'm not referring to you, Moon-sook."

She counters with: "You're different from your films. Sorry, but you're actually just another Korean man." Throughout this exchange, their desire for each other builds. He might be a jerk, yet he's an alluring jerk, and she sneaks off from Chang-wook to sleep with him anyway.

If this were an American movie, there would almost inevitably have to be some sort of "redemption" or punishment in store for the heel Joong-rae, and audiences who've been trained to expect that are flummoxed when it never arrives. I thought that Hong's conception of Joong-rae was the most brilliant aspect of "Woman on the Beach." Although Hong depicts deplorable behavior, the tone never becomes hateful or condescending or "ironic", as it does in films by Alexander Payne or Noah Baumbach, where the crassness of the characters is indistinguishable from the moviemaker's point of view.

In giving us a protagonist who's a monster of sensitivity, Hong succeeds where Baumbach, who attempted a similar feat in "Margot at the Wedding," dismally failed, because Hong, without resort to cartoonish heightening, shows how people genuinely behave.

There isn't anyone working in America now who can match Hong both for the punch of his writing and his technical mastery. As a director, he has a refreshing aversion to close-ups. He and his cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo share a painter's perspective on figure and landscape- framing the actors from top to toe among the sand dunes and against the mountains without sacrificing a sense of intimacy.

Hong's three leads are flawless. As Joong-rae, Kim Seung-woo winningly elevates selfishness to high art; Ko Hyun-joung's Moon-sook believably embodies a dreamy object of desire with dire shortcomings of her own; and as Chang-wook, Kim Tae-woo has a supremely comic moment when he demands that Joong-rae apologize for swearing at a sushi waiter. It's a thrilling sequence, surprisingly--the clash between a man of high principles and a man of none rarely plays with as much juice as it's given here.

"Woman on the Beach" plays May 30-June 5 at the Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 N.E. 50th St., Seattle. For showtimes, call 206-523-3935.

N.P. Thompson can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

Send correspondence to:
Northwest Asian Weekly • P.O. Box 3468 • Seattle • WA  98114
Tel: 206.223.5559 •  Fax: 206.223.0626 • Email: info@nwasianweekly.com
Please bookmark this site: www.nwasianweekly.com.