Lament / Elegy of the Earth: As Queer as a Three-Dollar Bill Named Jong-man

I'm pretty sure Kim Hee-cheol's Lament is a tragic gay love story. But I'm not totally sure. I mean the two main guys never kiss but cute, stupid Jong-man (Lee Byung-hun) who works in a beer hall definitely appears to fall in love-at-first-sight with alcoholic composer Kwang-su (Shin Hyeon-jun) who's just found out that his crazy brother committed suicide. But is it love just because the two guys shack up together in an apartment then move into an abandoned house to escape the cops? or because they run through a field while screaming something about escaping their pasts? or because the composer sobers up and sweetly ties the waiter's tie in the morning? Actually, Jong-man's not a waiter. He's an aspiring actor-screenwriter who videotapes himself engaged in mundane activities like eating and making funny faces before faxing his script -- a Meg Ryan vehicle -- repeatedly to Hollywood. He's a man with big dreams, my friend. As to his crush, Kwang-su would be happy enough to attain more modest goals, like staying out of the hands of the corrupt police force and maybe cuddling with not-too-successful, nearly mute independent business owner Se-hee (Jeong Seon-kyeong) whose music shop is always full of musical instruments but never customers. It's hard to imagine this movie getting many customers either, gay, straight or otherwise!

When I Turned Nine: The Crush That Couldn't Crush Him

If I remember correctly, when I was nine, the world was a polarized place. Good and bad were pretty easily differentiated, playground alliances dissolved as quickly as they were formed, and crushes came and went with growing intensity despite being hormone-free. Violence could come out of anywhere. Furthermore, the meaning of life wasn't obfuscated by fancy theories. It just was. Everything had a mystery to it. Yun In-ho's grade school drama When I Turned Nine does a lovely job of capturing that time as it charts the evolving relationship between a noble spirited boy (Kim Seok) and the new girl (Lee Se-yeong) whom he falls for. She's both pretty and pretty awful: She lies pathologically, screams if she doesn't get her way, fake cries if she's losing an argument, and acts like she's better than everyone else. Yet you never question his devotion to her because when you're a kid no one expects your actions to be ruled by logic. (That they do expect that from adults can be a bit baffling.) Maybe she's acting out because of a deep, dark secret. Maybe she's a sociopath. We'll never know. Like our hero's mom (Jeong Seon-kyeong), we're blind in one eye. We know we only see half the picture at any given moment and that the big answers are, most likely, not forthcoming.