My Beautiful Days: Remembering the Forgettable People

Not much happens for 20-something Jun-i (Kim Hyun-sung) in Im Jong-jae's My Beautiful Days and much of the little that does happen eventually comes undone. There's the affair that he's having with an older woman (Bang Eun-jin) which dissolves. There's the chance meeting with an old flame (Pyeon Eun-jeong) which doesn't reignite so much as lead him to her sister (Kim Gyu-ri) which doesn't go anywhere either. A friendship with the owner (Myeong Gye-nam) of the dry cleaners where he works sweetens then fades. His part-time military service is about to end. And yet, My Beautiful Days is hardly nothing. This delicately presented slice-of-life pic accurately reflects a time in life when possibility abounds despite a lack of direction and motivation.

There's definitely drama -- faces are slapped, even bones are broken -- but none of it feels hyperbolic. (Much more charged is the seemingly innocent foot race on a high school track and the grabbing of a hand in an elevator.) My Beautiful Days is wistful, not wild, searching, not searing. All of the characters seem somewhat lost but none in a desperate way. You get a brief indication of where these drifters may be headed by the time of the final frames but even there, the film shows restraint by not looking that far into the future of people who are largely at the beginning of their adult lives.

That said, My Beautiful Days doesn't feel as though it's just talking to and about young people. Chance encounters and small gestures also have life-changing impacts on two of the older characters: The dry cleaners owner is a former painter whose one-time peer and probable lover is having a retrospective. Thanks to a nudge from Jun-i, the retired artist rediscovers his passion, which it turns out is art, not the woman. As such, My Beautiful Days opens possibility within all stages of life and increases a sense of hopefulness and wonder even as it makes no promises for joy or success. Small connections will have to suffice for most of us most of the time.

Address Unknown: Blinded by One Zany Sight After Another

Does Address Unknown mean something to anyone besides its edgy director Kim Ki-duk? I mean, besides a hilariously good time for movie buffs who equate "super weird" with "super wonderful"? Is there a message here amid the escalating madness? Do these symbols symbolize something or are they simply strange images without intended meaning? (Interpret at will!) Is there something deep to be gathered from watching kidnapped dogs get brutalized then sold as stew meat or of from seeing an acid-tripping, half-blind girl (Ban Min-jung) get courted by an unstable American soldier (Mitch Mahlum) who wants to fix her bad eye then carve his name on her chest? Can sociopolitical interpretations be drawn from the mean-spirited story of a half-breed son (Yang Dong-kun) who systematically slices the breast of his unhinged mother (Bang Eun-jin) every time she goes off on her neighbors by shouting insults in English? What can we lean from the behavior of the morose young man (Kim Young-min) who shoots down his enemy after being taught the art of archery by his self-aggrandizing father (Myeong Gye-nam)? For that matter, what are we supposed to make of Address Unknown when the three main characters all end up getting blinded in their right eye or when one of them gets propelled head first off his motorcycle to a muddy slapstick death, buried up to his hips with his legs sticking out in the air? Are we supposed to take that seriously? Seriously? Is it okay to giggle? Because I sure did.

Address Unknown has a portentous tone yet as the movie gets crazier and crazier, you suspect that Kim took some of the LSD pills that the American G.I. is carrying around. Under the influence, he's forgotten to take more care in casting his characters (the American actors are particularly horrible) and crafting the dialogue. It's no relief that Kim chooses to have three largely silent characters instead of one. What we have in place of the silent enigma is a trio of mopey dopes suffering from depression. Which isn't to say that Address Unknown is too depressing! Far from it, it's actually often unintentionally funny. I wouldn't go so far as to call Kim's 2001 film his first comedy. But then again, maybe I should. Watch it, and you tell me!

Princess Aurora: Mom Fulfills Dead Daughter's Curse From the Grave

I hereby declare the serial kller movie Korea's answer to the American musical. It's a genre that Korean directors constantly reinvent in spectacular ways and one which receives their most lavish attentions. It's also a subset that contains some of my favorite Korean films: Save the Green Planet, Memories of Murder, even the ludicrous Hera Purple. Princess Aurora puts yet another arresting spin on the category. This time, director Bang Eun-jin throws the whodunit aspect out the window and shifts the suspense over to another question: Why doesn't the bible-reading detective (Moon Sung-keun) turn in his dissociative ex-wife (Eom Jeong-hwa) once he's figured out she's behind the gruesome crimes? That it involves their dead daughter is part of the answer; so is plain rudeness. But given that the murderess is caught, convicted and condemned three quarters of the way through the film, you'll have to find your mystery elsewhere at the end. As you're rediscovering it, Bang will tell you the reason behind each death and something less tangible about the pursuit of justice. Sometimes, it's petty; sometimes, it's profound. But Princess Aurora is always exquisitely photographed. As a feature debut, Bang's is an impressive accomplishment.

301/302: What Really Counts for Women

It's hard not to imagine that scenarist Lee Suh-goon's 301/302 was inspired by a found box of papers by a now-dead radical feminist from the 1970s. The central thesis plays out between two single women who reside across the hall from each other and who conveniently represent diametrically opposed aspects of stifled personhood. In apartment 301 lives a divorcee (Bang Eun-jin) who loves to cook, eat, screw, scream, and be complimented. You'd say she was a carefree spirit if she hadn't cooked the family dog then fed it to her husband in a flashback. In apartment 302 lives an anorexic intellectual (Hwang Sin-hye) who hates sausage, was molested by her stepdad the butcher, and could probably resolve all that inner turmoil if her editor let her write in the first person for goodness sake. I kid you not. Eventually, the two become one as the food-fetishist makes a stew out of the grim-faced bulimic. I kept waiting for someone to say, "Eat me." No such luck. A little lesbianism would have gone a long way amid the psycho-symbolism. The closest we get is having the surviving tenant steal the starving tenant's smart bob of a hairstyle posthumously. Women can be so vindictive! Down with the patriarchy.