Entangled: Whose Death Is It Anyway?

What makes for an unhappy family? My relationship to my parents is complicated. One brother I talk to weekly; the other, yearly at best. Both my brothers are divorced with kids. I wouldn't say my childhood was rosy but I wouldn't say it was terrible either. Do most of us see our upbringing as typical despite all the little variations and kinks therein? Be that as it may, the Kims of Entangled are a truly cursed and miserable lot. Even when things are going relatively well at the start of Lee Don-ku's bleak kitchen-sink drama, no one seems even slightly contented although the son-in-law (Song Il-kook) is giving it his damnedest to put on his best face. But as for the anxious mother (Kim Young-ae) who's memory is slipping away, the cranky older daughter (Do Ji-won) who's having a difficult pregnancy, and the youngest (Kim So-eun) who's getting bullied by a tough classmate (Lee Min-ji) at her high school, all three are suffering, suffering, suffering. Or so they think. Because everything's about to go down right the toilet big time. They didn't know how good they had it!

Director Lee is no stranger to grim realities. His previous film Fatal was a despairing look at a guilt-ridden man seeking for redemption from a rape victim. But this time around, he's less interested in seeing how people try to repair the damage they've done (or survive the pain they've undergone) and more committed to showing how much worse things can get. Bit by bitter bit. A series of deaths — one accidental, one suicidal, two intentional — all lie ahead as does insanity, prostitution, corporal punishment, and a bloody nose. Let's just say only one major character survives and the rest are probably glad they didn't. The only "kind" character — a teacher (Kim Geun-young) who brings diapers to the new mom and worries about the younger sister going "bad" — has two scenes I think. They're like little reprieves from all the misery. Not sunshine exactly. Just a lightening of the storm. In life, I guess sometimes that will have to do when gray skies are here to stay.

Fatal: Cheap Isn't a Bad Thing

Rape. Crime. Poverty. Murder. All these things tend to get glamorized in the movies, whether that's the director's intent or not. With flawless faced actors shot in supersaturated colors and from provocative angles, the abhorrent becomes art and subversively appetizing so even when a brutal scene manifests some of the terribleness of it all, with that high gloss, with that visual splendor, it also all looks pretty damned pretty. Which is one of the reasons, Lee Don-ku's harrowing rape-revenge pic Fatal is so affecting. It looks horrible. The ramshackle apartment settings, the discount clothing, even the cast itself never truly look good because Kang Moon-bong's cinematography won't let any of it do so. Appearing to be entirely shot on low-quality film stock about to expire and therefore robbed of any color or contour, Fatal feels sordid in part because the reality unfolding before you never appears lovely, painterly or eye-catching. You're never seduced by the images. Ever. Nothing looks good because nothing is good.

But intentionally crappy cinematography isn't going to make a movie even if the anemic images suit the material. Lucky for us, Lee's storytelling delivers the goods. For with Fatal, Lee has concocted a new kind of Asperger's Syndrome antihero: the boyish, eternally awkward outsider Sung-gong (Nam Yeon-woo) who may be coming to the rescue of rape survivor Jang-mi (Yang Jo-a) and sacrificing his job (admittedly dead-end) and his friends (admittedly dead beat) but who is no knight in shining armor. He's damaged goods, a victim of systematic bullying who's obsession with Jang-mi is "creepy stalker" as much if not more than it's love. Despite all his well-meaning gestures and efforts, the most caring and thoughtful action available to him might have been to just get the hell out of the young woman's life and make attrition and restitution unbeknownst to her somewhere far away. Like the Vatican City. Did he really have to attend the same Evangelical church as Jang-mi to find salvation? What's the opposite of Amen?