A Flower in Hell: Servicing Servicemen

It's 1958 in South Korea. That means pretty much everything — or at least the cinematography — is in black and white, and nowhere more so than among A Flower in Hell's nattily-attired group of young thieves and prostitutes who are struggling to survive in an economy that seems to revolve around servicing — and ripping off — American servicemen. Some, like the married sex worker Sonya (a delightfully gum-smacking Choi Eun-hie), seem to thrive in this environment; others, like the war-orphan Julie (Gsng Seon-hui), don't seem to see any other choices. When a country boy named Dong-shik (Jo Hae-won) comes looking for his citified brother Young-shik (Kim Hak) on behalf of their aging mother, major trouble erupts among them all.

That trouble includes fisticuffs that nearly end in a knife fight, a train heist that culminates in a deadly shoot-out, and probably one of the best mud fights ever committed to celluloid. Directed by Shin Sang-ok, the film abounds in wonderful details like the shocking pelvic thrusts of the performer at the barracks dance hall and a discarded, filmy scarf trailing out of a car pulling out of the frame. The use of music is also striking as much of the film takes place in silence accented by the rare car horn or the sound of an insect while Sonya's theme song pops up repeatedly. No wonder Shin and Choi were abducted by the North Korean government. (See the documentary The Lovers & the Despot for further details.) Together these two were capable of making cinematic magic.