Red Carpet: From XXX to XOXO

I put off watching Park Bum-Soo's impossibly delightful Red Carpet for weeks if not months because I figured it was a low-budget, mildly titillating, soft porn skin flick pretending to be legit. Sometimes, these type of movies can be fun diversions but you have to be in the right mood to watch them and keep the sound low so as not to disturb the neighbors. One day in March 2017, I was finally bored enough and let 'er roll. Well, Red Carpet was not what I expected. Not by a long shot. Far from being some pervy misogynist director's poorly acted, barely scripted excuse for some gratuitous nudity, Red Carpet is an incredibly wise romantic comedy that knows how hard it is to shrug off imposed shame and stay true to your heart, especially when that involves defying convention and the establishment.

Admittedly, there are plenty of gags about erections, sex, porn actors, and secret identities. But Red Carpet is actually a very sex-positive movie. There's nothing wrong with acting, writing or directing porn for the participants here. Any judgment suggesting as much comes from the buffoons outside the biz. Indeed there's a sweet camaraderie among the cinematic sex workers that manifests in unexpected ways, like when the performers and crew members put on corporate drag so that the lead stud can video chat with his wife from a makeshift conference room. As acts of deceptions go, this one is awfully cute.

Playing the role of the young porno director with non-porno dreams, Yoon Kye-sang is utterly lovable while Koh Joon-hee does a deft job at showing a former child actress's development from an insufferable attention-seeker to a young woman who knows success is irrelevant in a world where we deny ourselves the room to feel deeply. The entire supporting cast is spot-on, although Hwang Chan-sung was probably my favorite as the bumbling new crew member whose passion for Godard doesn't stop him from working on a very different kind of art film.