My Name Is Loh Kiwan: Tough Life

You think you have it rough? Consider the life of Loh Kiwan, a North Korean refugee (Song Joong-ki) who flees with his mother to China, only to flee again on his own to Brussels where he's got no friends, no family, and very little money (which he loses soon enough). To stay, he's going to have to prove his nationality but how do you do that exactly when your country of origin doesn't share birth records and your first second home has its own bureucractic complications compounded by the fact that you were — by necessity — living a secret life. There's more. You can't get a legal job. You don't know the language so you can't argue on your own behalf. The first non-governmental person you meet who also speaks Korean is a pretty drug addict (Choi Sung-eun) with a criminal history and a massive debt tied to it. Still think you've got it rough, fellow Korean movie fan?

Personally, I've lived in a bare-bones SRO with not much money to my name; I've survived off a diet of hotdogs, cornflakes, and low-cost liquor but I've never been this alone, this dependent on the kindness of strangers, this out of my element. Thankfully, there are some kind strangers out there: a Chinese-Korean meatpacker (Lee Sang-hee) and the father (Jo Han-chul) of the woman who stole his wallet (and his heart)... Sure, they're flawed and make his life worse at times but since there's so much bad in this life, taking the bad with the good isn't so bad when it comes with some good. My Name Is Loh Kiwan made me appreciate my life. It also made me appreciate some people's ability to salvage a stylish wardrobe from the discard bin.

20th Century Girl: Adolescent Lessons in Love

There's love at first sight And then there's love at first sighting. Don't know the difference? 20th Century Girl is here to make it clear as one of its two besotted teen heroines, Yeon-du (Roh Yoon-seo), becomes thoroughly enamored of their new classmate Hyun-jin (Park Jung-woo) the moment she spots his silhouette in the doorway of her mother's clothing shop. Sometimes, the heart doesn't even need eye contact! Compare this irrational behavior to that of her best friend Bo-ra (Kim Yoo-jeong) who takes a little longer to warm up to his best friend Woon-ho (Byeon Woo-seok). With tearjerking results.

Because these two girls are destined to get these two boys mixed up. They both will fall hard for Woon-ho but with Yeon-du abroad for a heart operation and Bo-ra trailing the wrong guy unknowingly on her friend's behalf, plenty of seemingly innocent hijinks will tangle up Bang Woo-ri's YA yarn — gang fights and falling plums, first kisses and drunken confessions. But... since Bo-ra can't square her divided loyalties, you're not sure who will end up with whom. Or for how long. You see, the trouble with acting on your friend's behalf in high school, at least, is that your actions may be misattributed and misinterpreted. Especially when you're too embarassed to say how you really feel. Well, maybe not just in high school. In K-drama, too.

Bloodline: Poor, Poor Miserable Need

Opportunity is scarce for the residents of the hilltop shanties in Bloodline: a sock-selling daughter (Um Aing-ran) gets pressured to become a "hostess"; a cigarette pedlar (Shin Yeong-gyun) can't scrounge together the doctor's fee for his wife (Lee Kyoung-hee). In this part of town, one tough-luck story is no better or worse than the other. Newspaper serves as wallpaper; your daily outfit has at least one patch. And generally, it goes downhill from there.

Neo-realism Korean-style rarely disappoints and Kim Soo-yong's group portrait of North Korean defectors making hard-scrabble lives for themselves just south of the 38th parallel is no exception. This career-making film, shot in expert black and white, covers a lot of territory too including swank nightclubs, military barracks, construction sites, and street merchants. You can see the inequities in all these environments and how inflexible the system is to change. Is it any wonder that the older generation (Kim Seung-ho, Hwang Jeong-sun, Choi Nam-hyeon) have grown dissatisfied with the life they chose? Was it worth all that trouble and effort just to get a family-sized can of papayas? The spark of hope is reserved for those who get out!

Awards: Blue Dragons for Best Film, Best Actor (Kim), Best Actress (Hwang), and Best Supporting Actor (Choi); Grand Bell for Best Film.

Seashore Village: The Merry Widow

Shamefully uneducated in the Korean language, I'm fully aware that I repeatedly miss nuances in Korean films. In the award-winning Seashore Village, for instance, one English subtitle reads "It's a boy" but the actual dialogue is "It's got a penis" — something I'd have missed without my current Korean-American love interest. There's a big difference between those two statements extending way beyond mere Americanization. What other phrases got expurgated in the name of decency, I don't know. But translation gets complicated when what's acceptable becomes a shaping factor. Considering Seashore Village revolves around the sexual bond between a widow (Ko Eun-a) and her second husband (Shin Yeong-gyun), I'd hazard a guess that other frank statements have been "cleaned up" in the name of propriety. What can't be hidden, however, is the couple's explicit physical connection, something which guides much of the action — sometimes delightfully, sometimes disturbingly. (Also, inescapable is a lighthearted lesbian tryst between two minor characters who, far from reviled, are viewed as a subject of merriment by the local women.)

Shot in a fable-making black and white yet feeling incredibly contemporary, from its haircuts to its moral relativism, Kim Soo-young's 1965 classic Seashore Village feels equally archival and anticipatory, like an unintentionally modern artwork that nods to rape culture, Stockholm syndrome, gynocentric communities, shamanism, gender norms, and a back-to-nature movement as if such components were always an unavoidable part of life. And they were. And they are. With exceptional performances from its two leads, Seashore Village is concrete proof that Korea has been making world-class cinema for at least 50 years; what an invaluable service the Korean Film Archive provide us by showing us as much on YouTube!

Black Light: Question Quest

What do you consider the worse fate? Dying in an auto accident or ending up in a coma? Being widowed by a car crash (that may not have been your husband's fault) or being a caretaker for your spouse (who may have caused the other man's death)? Finding out your partner may have been suicidal or realizing that your ex might've had issues with addiction? Having to return to a factory job near the scene of the crime or bumping into the other wife who — like you — has yet to process this life-changing disaster?

Bae Jong-dae's drama certainly is a competition of woes, so much so that other characters like the daughter (Park Ji-hu), the brother, the sister-in-law, and the chummy boss are nothing next to the two central women (played by Yeom Hye-ran and Kim Si-eun). Whether the company is at fault (probably, yes) or the police botched up the original investigation (also, yes) doesn't ultimately natter. Black Light. Every question these women ask of themselves and each other consistently leads to more trouble. The one truth that feels definitive is that big business couldn't give a damn about your quality of life as long as they're making a profit.

Minari: Crying Puddles

"It's not called a penis, it's called a ding-dong!"

Strong words. And not simply a joke either. Not at all. Because while not many artfilms are built around bedwetting, you could say a good part of Lee Isaac Chung's sublime Minari is. This exquisite movie about a nuclear family who relocate to Arkansas to start a pastoral life outside big city chicken sexing has a major plot point about peeing that encapsulates everyone — including the cheeky granny (Yuh-Jung Youn) who comes to live with Mom, Dad, Son, and Daughter when farmlife gets particularly rough.

What's so tough about raising crops, you ask. Oh, pretty much everything: the long hours, the physical labor, the dependency on the weather, the religious zealotry of your help (Will Patton), and, in this case, the claustrophobia of the trailer you now call home. Is it worth it? According to Dad (Steven Yeun), the answer is yes. According to Mom (Han Yeri), the answer is no. As for the kids, they're less decisive. The girl (Noel Cho) may be older and wiser but the boy (Alan S. Kim) is whose opinion matters most. Not because he's the male heir but because the actor who plays him is pretty much perfect.

Miss Baek: Not Without Her Daughter

Mothers rescuing their children... That's nothing new. What's rarer is mother's rescuing other people's chidren. Which is what Lee Ji-won's harrowing melodrama Miss Baek is all about — a disturbed, antisocial workaholic (Han Ji-min) who, when she isn't rejecting her patient boyfriend (Lee Hee-joon), is befriending a destitute little girl (Kim Si-uh) whose gamester daddy (Baek Soo-jang) and his sadistic soulmate (Kwon So-Hyeon) are abusing their young charge with a viciousness that'll make you gasp. Failed by her neighbors, the cops, and the local social service agencies despite obvious evidence of torture, poor ragamuffin Ji-eun has taken to the streets in search of food scraps, a decent change of clothes, and a sympathetic word.

What a relief to see her get all that and a trip to a seaside amusement park. With her scarred legs, knotted hair, and butchered pinky finger, this kid should be set up with the Make-a-Wish foundation for seasonal check-ins and rewards. Cinderella has nothing on her. Plus, she doesn't need a pumpkin to change into a riding coach or a nest of mice to transform into footmen. As for her gritty fairy godmother, Miss Baek lacks the bippity-boppity-boo to make such large-scale miracles come true. Limitations notwithstanding, this new self-appointed guardian recognizes Ji-eun needs a new family, even if it scares the shit out of her to get involved. So what might this non-traditional family look like? To its credit, Miss Baek avoids the obvious feel-good answer. Life can get better. Here's the caveat: You've got to put yourself out of hell.

26 Years: Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes

One South Korean counterpart for the Kent State Shooting of 1970 could be the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 during which protesting university students and sympathetic citizens were shot — in the thousands! — by a military that had basically just staged a coup following the president's assassination. Was justice served afterwards? Hardly. So Cho Geun-hyun's historical fantasy imagines four traumatized children of the revolution who have grown up eager for revenge. It's a fairly small group of rebels: a sharpshooter (Han Hye-jin), a security officer (Bae Soo-bin), a rookie cop (Im Seul-ong), an older regretful soldier (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a food-cart owner (Jin Goo) whose face has a cut that makes him look like a Harlequin.

The source of their ire is "The Man" (Jang Gwang), a politician who's apparently impervious to criticism and living a luxurious life devoid of any real socializing. What constitutes revenge varies from person to person. Does he need to issue a formal apology? Grovel and cry? Admit his crimes and go to prison? Or die? Eventually, most of these vigilantes realize that the only one they can make happen is the last one and that's going to be a struggle. An extended flashback in cartoon reveals the horrors that led them to where they are. But where they go after the final frame is anyone's guess. America might be one option. Purgatory, another. But with a run time well over two hours, you might stop conjecturing as to what lies ahead.

High Society: Art About Art With Good Art

In today's cinematic universe, the order of the day is cynicism and corruption. No one expects characters to have noble motives and if they do, no one expects them to keep them for the duration of the film. Which is one of the surprises of Byun Hyuk's High Society, a political drama in which two deplorable leads — a callous economics professor (Park Hae-il) and a ruthless curator (Ae Soo) — start off willing to compromise everything for potential social status, only to discover a moral high ground along the way. As such, High Society is a bit of a fantasy. Who can imagine a corrupt couple finding their inner moral compass after living without one for so long? Be that as it may, it's a fantasy that satisfies because it's what we wish would happen to our culture's elites. Nothing could be better than people in power using that power for good after a lifetime of not truly giving a damn.

Not that High Society itself is a satisfying movie. Neither the representative of academia nor the art world comes across as particularly appealing. The most likable character in fact is a multimedia artist (Lee Jin-wook), who towering video installations — sometimes incorporating live performance — are truly a wonder to behold. As spectacles go, the visionary visuals within High Society make you want to stop watching the movie and track down the actual creator for more of the same. Anyone happen to know who that is? I couldn't find out when searching online.

Our Twisted Hero: The Loneliness of Outrage

Political art always gets a bad rap. That bias is based on the idea that social commentary, like a critique of fascism for instance, is inherently didactic, that informing us about power structures is somehow a lesser goal that sharing insights about Life or Love or Loss. In reality, great political art still does that too: Through a discourse on society, we can learn about our own inadequacies or the fallacy that the pursuit of happiness is even possible in the purest sense when other oppressive factors come into play. Look at Park Jong-won's Our Twisted Hero. The film is a detailed analysis of fascism as it plays out among a classroom of boys at a country public school but it's also a poignant examination of how even righteous, rebellious spirits can be broken down and seduced by corrupt power systems in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

By not following the classic underdog narrative and having its infuriated 5th-grader eventually triumph over the class bully, Our Twisted Hero is a painfully accurate recreation of how hard it is to topple corrupt systems of thought and behavior and the lasting damage that's done when you try to stick up for yourself or an ideal only to encounter indifference, shame, betrayal, and ostracism. To actually combat the bullies one needs a commensurate strength, whether that comes in a collaborative groundswell or in a greater hierarchical ally. The lone wolf is an incredibly rare phenomenon, one which Hollywood likes to pretend is — secretly — each and every one of us but which is probably more like one in a million. Still, you gotta admire the chutzpah of anyone who breaks from the pack (even temporarily) to fight the good fight. We're all capable of that and that's no small thing either.

A Public Prosecutor and a Teacher: What a Coincidence

The likelihood is incredibly great that director Yoon Dae-Ryong and his co-writer Kim Chun-Kwang must've seen the 1940 movie Tuition since their own A Public Prosecutor and a Teacher so closely follows the hard-times plot of its predecessor. But whereas the older flick focuses primarily on one poor young boy's constant struggle to get a decent education despite his ailing grandmother and his missing parents, its 1948 successor is ultimately about that down-on-his-luck student's sympathetic teacher who ends up moving out of town, getting married, then harboring an escaped criminal with disastrous results. Featuring a voiceover by a byeonsa with a quavering voice, this update with its narrative expansion defies expectations by packing in twice as much plot despite running a significantly shorter amount of time.

The impact of these changes is so dramatic that it seems ridiculous to compare the two despite a few scenes that are almost mirror replicas of the original. Because in the end, A Public Prosecutor and a Teacher is more pure melodrama, right down to the poses many of its characters periodically assume at times of great crisis: a look to the heavens at a time of mercy; hands raise to the face at a moment of terror; the collapsing on the ground when suffering pangs of hunger. This is not a criticism as such touches are part of the pleasure of A Public Prosecutor... In a world when vengeful husbands fall on knives and abandoned children wander around at night, nothing less than a bitten knuckle will do to convey the tension.

Tuition: A Poor Education

Poverty may inspire some to get an education but it also gets in the way of learning. It's not just going to school hungry that does it in Choi In-kyu's and Bang Han-jun's drama Tuition either. It's also the shame that comes with not having the cash to pay your tuition. And it's not the teacher that's creating that sense of guilt. The kids without money feel bad all on their own. Yet the drive to learn is strong! So when given the opportunity to go to his aunt's house over 20 kilometers away, Yeong-dal (Jeong Chang-jo) makes the journey alone — first on foot and then a stretch on an oxcart before resuming his trek unassisted (often with indifferent vehicles passing him by). You have to admire his tenacity even as you wish he had an adult to accompany him, given his grandmother (Bok Hye-suk) — and primary care taking — is continually ailing. Where are his parents, you ask? Well, they're trying to make a living elsewhere and while they do show up at the end, they don't appear overly delighted to see him. The formality in that part may be cultural but it's still pretty weird to witness.

In truth, there's not a lot of emotion to be found in Tuition. Most of the action is presented matter-of-factly with incredibly sparse dialogue, although the scene in which the young boy cries that he's "bad luck" as a way to comprehend the lack of food and money in his struggling household is certainly an anguishing one. I also appreciated the subplot involving a young girl in similar straits: She's the school's other top pupil and their initial rivalry to get top honors shifts once they realize their struggles are the same.

Columbus: Korean-American Comes Home

Admittedly, the presence of the Korean language in Columbus is primarily a handful of international phone calls held by Jin (John Cho), a book translator who has returned to the States to care for his ailing father (Joseph Anthony Foronda), a noted scholar, but Columbus also touches upon the cultural differences between American and South Korean cultures on many fronts and is really such an exquisite film in its own unique way that it seems appropriate to bend the rules of this blog and include it. After all, Park Chan-wook's Hollywood entry Stoker and the dry tutorial The Great Courses: The World's Greatest Churches: Two Churches in Seoul, Korea are both part of Korean Grindhouse, too, and neither is nearly as good as Kogonada's exquisite indie flick.

What makes Columbus so special? Oh, many things like how it avoids turning its central relationship between Jin and Cassandra (Haley Lu Richardson), an architecture nerd, into a romance; how it similarly avoids sex scenes between these characters and a friend of the family (Parker Posey) and a librarian (Rory Culkin) respectively; how it spends so much time talking about ideas especially as they relate to architecture — most memorably to the work of Eero Saarinen, his father Eliel Saarinen, and the lesser-known Deborah Berke. The movie makes you realize how often traditional films ignore the myriad relationships available to men and women, parent and child, peer and peer, person and place. The cinematography by Elisha Christian is also worth noting as it so successfully uses the striking buildings and interiors of the film's hometown for truly remarkable framework again and again and again. I can't recommend this one enough.

Beasts of Prey: The Return of Insect Woman

Kim Ki-young's late-career melodrama Beasts of Prey is also known as Carnivore and Carnivorous Animals in English-speaking countries but it might just as easily have been called Insect Woman 2 or The Return of Insect Woman or Child of the Insect Woman so indebted is it to the 1972 film that would set the tone for most of Kim's kooky output for the next decade. Repeating plot points include a young woman forced into prostitution by economics who then ends up wreaking havoc on the family of the patriarch who stole her virginity; an insatiably hungry baby that miraculously appears shortly after that middle-aged man is doped into a vasectomy; a bratty, self-important son who swears off vegetables and meat for a diet consisting entirely of honey; an out-of-control rat infestation problem in the basement of the family's country estate; a contractual agreement that divides daddy's time between two households — twelve hours in each.

Some changes work better in Beasts of Prey than previously — the sex scene on the glass table covered with spilled candies; the concubine's insistence that her lover wear a diaper and bib to turn back the clock. Most improvements, however, do not. The look of Beasts of Prey is very akin to that of a 1980s prime time TV soap opera; the acting recalls the comic stridency of early John Waters flicks. Sadly missing is the "infant versus rat" battle, the shadowy figure in the refrigerator, and the demented snarls of the female protagonist. A narrative thread involving gigolos who target middle-aged women also gets dropped too quickly while the barmaid with the mullet should've had more screen time for her hairdo alone.

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.

Woman of Fire: Kim Ki-Young Recycles Himself

With Woman of Fire (1971), you get a justifiably strong déjà vu feeling as psychosexual auteur Kim Ki-young revisits the exact same territory that he charted so memorably in his landmark movie The Housemaid (1961). But there's something new going on here too as Kim is also laying the groundwork for much of his wildly phantasmagorical work of the 1970s, freaky films like Insect Woman (1972), Promise of the Flesh (1975), and Killer Butterfly (1978). Sure, we're back to a housemaid (Youn Yuh-jung) who gets wrapped up in a perverse love triangle with a composer (Won Namkoong) and his wife (Jeon Gye-hyeon) but we're also getting a glimpse of things to come as Kim would go on to explore the eternally demented battle of the sexes with quite a few variations.

None of it's subtle in Woman of Fire. This country girl who becomes a domestic definitely has a screw loose — perhaps caused by being sexually attacked before heading to the city. The tendency of a few characters to laugh maniacally creates a feeling that the world, and not just a few outcasts, have gone certifiably insane. You might be frustrated or delighted by how much Woman of Fire has in common with The Housemaid. As for me, I experienced both reactions. Ultimately, this over-the-top melodrama might be the quintessence of Kim: the look, the vibe, the excesses, the creepy score, the tawdry tale. Which doesn't make it his best. It simply means that it's not the worst.

Awards: For her turn as the deranged servant who ends up ruling the roost, Youn Yuh-jung won top honors as Best Actress at Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival.

Yangsan Province: Folk Film / Heart Hurt

I not-so-secretly suspect that Greed is the worst of all vices in that it is the vice that most often teams up with other vices to get the job done. Here the sin of avarice manifests in the mother of a village maiden (Kim Sam-hwa) when the parent becomes covetous of gifted silk. With such rich fabric on her mind, she sacrifices her daughter to the town bully (Park Am), a spoiled brat whose lust for the young girl becomes a destructive obsession. Naturally, obstacles exist — like the betrothed (Jo Yong-su), a poor lad whose father died some time ago and left his family poor as dirt — but Greed and Lust have made a pact. Nothing and no one will stop them. Things do not turn out so good for anyone.

The oldest surviving film of Kim Ki-young, Yangsan Province is an exquisite piece of filmmaking. The performances are highly stylized with the actors often striking poses as if they were recreating a 19th-century melodrama or pressing their faces together while facing out towards the camera like a pair of lovers in a silent film romance. The moment when the young woman slowly sinks out of the camera frame as she joins her seducer on the ground is particularly memorable. The soundtrack is also a stunner orchestrated with traditional Korean instruments that crescendo into an opera of sorts when the doomed young man's mother (Ko Seon-ae) believes her son has died. My favorite part of all may be when the score is integrated into the action as a masked troupe of traveling performers appears to mimic the movie's storyline just in time for the wedding/funeral/suicides. Highly recommended.

Iodo: Men Investigate Female Society

When a failed entrepreneur (kim Jeong-chul) mysteriously disappears off a ship headed to an island slated for ecotourist development, his drinking buddy (Choi Yun-seok) — who just happens to be a reporter! — is unfairly blamed for the death. No official inquiry takes place but the surviving journalist does feel compelled to quit his job and set his reputation aright by conducting his own unofficial investigation with his boss (Park Am) in tow. Which brings them both to a strange isle peopled almost entirely by women who have created a puzzling culture incorporating shamanism, deep-sea fishing, and necrophilia.

At first I admit I found Iodo somewhat difficult to track what with talk of frozen sperm and spirit possession casually tossed about. But by the end, I was fine with matter-of-factly accepting narrative elements such as a poorly timed sneeze and the potential powers of an incandescent infertility treatment. Can a Ponzi scheme dependent on abalone reproduction make an entire community filthy rich? Is chemical dumping or sisterly sorcery responsible for a handsome schemer's undoing? Can one woman (Kwon Mi-hye) actually strangle herself with a satin scarf? Best of all, how does her tattooed rival (Lee Hwa-shi) stiffen the limp genitals of their dead lover? (Warning: It ain't pretty!)

So many questions I'd never considered came into play in Iodo. And you know what? I was game for all of them. "It'll be doomsday. The end of human civilization," someone screams near the end of this Kim Ki-young freak show. That cry has become louder in recent years. And so this unusual concoction of sexploitation and eco-terrorism might initially register as outlandish nonsense but ends up feeling like an ahead-of-its-time warning about global apocalypse through climate change.

Promise of the Flesh: The Kink of Violence

Rape. That's a disturbing through line to have in your work but it appears to be one in the films of Kim Ki-young who repeatedly features sexual violence against women in his story lines. What makes that weird instead of just disturbing is that you sense that he's periodically attempting to combat sexism and misogyny between the scenes that show his unpredictable heroines being attacked. Bodices are ripped, breasts are exposed, but strangely these victims/survivors are less likely to scream than they are to be facially outraged. It's like Kim is aware of sexism but can't stop thinking of women primarily as sexual objects. Admittedly my exposure to Kim Ki-young is still fairly limited but in the especially twisted and perverse Promise of the Flesh, the leading lady — a murderess (Kim Ji-mee) — while definitely suffering from PTSD has a not-particularly-convincing journey to "love."

What kind of world is it when women are seduced by men barking lines like "I would marry any woman who would take care of my child" or "If you don't marry me, then I'll kill you then I'll kill myself"? It is a world of histrionics. Indeed, you get the feeling that Kim directed his actors to "play to the second balcony" for particularly heightened moments. People roll around on the floor, slap each other in the face, leer at each other as if only the crudest look could convey desire. The camerawork can be equally overstated with prolonged shots of the light at the top of the lighthouse or a particularly strange closeup that zooms in on a single eye during sex. The sweetest thing about Promise of the Flesh is the pink candy the prison guard (Park Jung-ja) is constantly slipping into her charge's mouth.

Awards: Grand Bell honors for Kim Ji-mee as Best Actress and Park Jung-ja as Best Supporting Actress.

Transgression: Head Monk in Training

The old monk is dying. Don't believe me? Then explain that blood he's just spat on the temple floor. But before he transitions to the next phase — nirvana seems a bit doubtful — he needs to pass on his mantle to a successor. There are a few men in the running: a power-hungry insider, an inspired academic, and a wise fool. But before we get to their final challenges (answering cryptic questions, fasting, and potentially jumping off a cliff), we get a glimpse into the lives of the latter two especially since they're best friends.

The bookish one mans the drum that calls monks to their daily beatings of bamboo, cures schizophrenia with a well-placed acupuncture needle, and has a tortured, largely platonic affair with a flirtatious female monk from a neighboring temple; his troublemaking buddy steals sacks of flour for money, farts in formal settings, and eats whenever he gets the chance. One is respected; one is loved. There's a lesson to be learned here now what might that be... Maybe lead with the heart, not the brain?

After watching Insect Woman and The Housemaid, I was expecting Transgression to veer into camp but Kim Ki-young chooses not to take the melodramatic route with this one. To the contrary, despite the theatrics — which are often quite striking and deliberate in a way that feels more arthouse than grindhouse — this film is grounded in a reality that mirrors our world with minimum grotesquerie. The extended opening shot of a giant rock may strike you as an example of bad moviemaking but when Kim returns to that seemingly bland visual at the end, it's suddenly laden with meaning that is nothing short of humbling. You might say, "Buddhism rocks."