Mulberry: She Gets Around

In an effort to spur online viewership (I suppose), the curators at the Korean Film Archive have resorted to creating new categories for their YouTube channel: Chuseok Comedies, Summer Scenery, and E.R.O.T.I.C. among them. Are the all caps in that new subsection intended to draw the eye or to evade the censorship filters? Whatever the reason, I ended up picking a movie from that playlist — Mulberry, the story of a woman who resorts to sex as a form of commerce after being abandoned by her gambling husband. Be forewarned: Lee Doo-yong sex-driven drama is neither titilating nor tawdry.

Lee Mi-sook's rustic sex worker feels like a pragmatic hustler then demeaned communal property. Her main problem doesn't end up being the men with whom she's swapping "favors" or the husband (Lee Dae-kun) whom she's deceiving or even the gossipy, catfighting wives. It's the dimwitted, lecherous, peeping tom (Lee Mu-jeong) of a farmhand who can't fathom why she won't put out for him too. Why do the men go crazy for her? As one woman at the laundry hole puts it: "Some women are born with a honey bush and some with a thorn bush."

Mulberry isn't arousing, unless you find the sight of a woman's behind while she's taking a pee a turn-on or the sound and sight of rushing water in a mill — in lieu of actual intercourse — hot, hot, hot. The actual sex scenes go from short to comic to depressing. According to IMDb, the original negative got damaged so a few scenes are missing. Whether they've been restored here or not doesn't matter much. It is what it is and it's kind of strange.