Kim Ki-Young's Top 10 Movies

The films of Kim Ki-young reflect a different South Korea than the one I learned about in the movies of Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Hong Sang-soo. I suppose you'll hear echoes most clearly in Kim Ki-duk's filmography which is similarly focused on disturbed psychodynamics but even so, I was not prepared for the zaniness that is Kim Ki-young. Best known for The Housemaid which more or less set a template for many of the movies that would follow, he also made some fine films atypical of that landmark flick, and ones which I happen to prefer. It's hard to believe Yangsan Province has been so summarily dismissed because I find it magical.

10. Woman of Fire: Proof that a director's quintessential film may not be the best of the bunch. (Which isn't to say it's not good.)

9. Iodo: This strange murder-mystery is set on an island run by women who go to extremes when competing for men.

8. Insect Woman: Arguably, the best of Kim's reworking of The Housemaid.

7. Killer Butterfly: This may be the weirdest in Kim's filmography with talking skeletons and 2,000-year-old urine both memorably featured.

6. Promise of the Flesh: A woman on her way to prison has the train ride of her life.

5. The Housemaid: This classic Korean psychosexual melodrama features many plot elements that Kim would revisit again and again.

4. Woman of Water: The ill-treated, silent female lead is a trope of cinema. Kim's take gives her voice though and the final message is a powerful one.

3. The Sea Knows: Set in Japan, this military flick finds a Korean soldier struggling to survive with some help from his Japanese girlfriend.

2. Yangsan Province: A love triangle ends in disaster for government official's son, a poor widow's son, and the woman they both love.

1. Transgression: This one takes Kim's extremist tendencies into a monastery where three monks are battling it out for the top spot.

Also by Kim Ki-young: Beasts of Prey

Woman of Water: Basket Case

When a handsome soldier returns from the Vietnam War with a bum leg, the only woman he can secure as a wife has a terrible stutter. And he needs a wife pronto in order to secure the GI benefits that will allow him to purchase a farm. Complicating matters, he's got PTSD worsened by his mother's death while the bride-to-be's got major social anxieties hardly helped by her unimpressive singing voice. "A match made in heaven," says one of the townsfolk ironically. In his dreams, perhaps.

In reality, the two have a nightmarish lot to work through. He still suffers through flashbacks of the frontlines (which can be triggered by the mention of an M-16). She's being exploited as free labor once he discovers her gift for basket-weaving. Will their firstborn child unite the two against all odds? Not once that tyke develops his own speech impediment. Will their newly hired truck-driver seduce the veteran/entrepreneur's wife? No, but she'll write a note saying he did. That last bit might sound a bit implausible but the arrival of a conniving barmaid pretty much throws logic out the window. She's one of those temptresses who seems born to do evil, an opportunist who'd probably get much further if she dumped her less crafty boyfriend.

I'm afraid this is one of those movies in which the femme fatale is missing the requisite je ne sai quoi that would make her irresistible. Is it the role or the actress? I'm not sure. But this troublemaking bad girl feels a little too obvious. Yet just when you think this is building to a predictable conclusion adhering to the rules of film noir, Kim Ki-young puts in a few final plot twists that more than redeem Woman of Water as a tale of redemption. Once again, despite the misogyny, Kim's sympathies lie with his leading ladies. As do ours.