The 11-day film festival in Berlin, which began last month on the 16th, concluded with an awards ceremony on the 26th. While the absence of Korean films at awards ceremonies around the world in recent years has left a bit of a void, Korean cinema has left its mark on filmmakers around the world with works worthy of its elevated status. This year's Korean films at the Berlinale include Yoo Heong-jun's Regardless of Us, Byun Sung Hyun's Kill Boksoon, and Hong Sang-soo's In Water, which have been invited to the Forum, Berlinale Specials, and Encounters sections, respectively.
A solid debut feature from a young new director
Regardless of Us by Yoo Heong-jun
Yoo Heong-jun's debut feature Regardless of Us, which premiered the day after the festival's opening night, is a work of structure and restraint. The film is divided into two acts. In the first act, Hwa-ryung, an actress who has lost her memory after suffering a stroke, meets the visiting crew and listens to them talk about the premiere and the film, and in the second act, the characters from the first act reappear, causing the audience to confirm and doubt what was said in the first act. The long takes, which are captured by a static camera with strict screen control, allow the audience to focus on the delicately crafted dialogue against the contrast of the black-and-white screen. Thus Regardless of Us is the debut film of a young director born in 93, but it has a sense of gravity and deep conventionality, and has the power to drag you through repetition and variation to the final scene.
The familiar Insadong Street, the minimalist composition of the black-and-white screen, and the enormous amount of dialogue are reminiscent of Hong Sang-soo, regardless of the director's nationality. However, Regardless of Us is clearly different and unique in that it seeks to find the subtle essence of what floats between reality and fiction. By allowing the audience to reassemble the fragments of the story, the film raises existential questions about how we shape the world around us.
"In the film, everyone thinks they're the master, and the model I originally envisioned was that the master of the story was the story itself," said director Yoo in a conversation with the audience after the world premiere. But the film didn't start with a story. Yoo, who used stories and situations as material to achieve this, said "I wanted to make a film that is like a 'cube' that keeps coming alive." There is a gap of about a year between the first and second parts of the film, during which Yoo thought about how to realize this cube, and the result is the second part, which was shot in line with the first part. Maybe that's why Regardless of Us sends ripples through the audience as it continues to ask questions.
Jeon Do-yeon was always Jeon Do-yeon
Kill Boksoon by Byun Sung-hyun
A film featuring a female killer protagonist is often compared to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Kill Boksoon does not shy away from these comparisons. The title Kill Boksoon is a play on the Korean language and a direct reference to Quentin Tarantino's influence. The protagonist, Boksoon, an ace hitman, is a single mom with a middle school daughter. "Killing people is easy compared to raising a child," she says, and when her contract ends, she decides to quit her job and focus on being a mother. But in the hunter's world, retirement isn't that simple. When she becomes prey, Boksoon embarks on one last mission to protect herself and her daughter. The witty dialogues, catchy music and delicious editing on the finely crafted screen will; keep you engrossed for the entire 137 minutes. The performances of the actors enhance the film, especially Jeon Do-yeon, who steals the show.
Unlike other brutal killers out for blood, Boksoon, played by Jeon Do-yeon, just does what she does best (and what pays the bills) among the many jobs in the world. That's why Boksoon is so calm and even cheerful when she kills without emotion. In a press conference before the world premiere, Jeon Do-yeon revealed that she was nervous about acting in an action film and wanted to do it really well, but Jeon Do-yeon is Jeon Do-yeon. Her stylish action, coupled with the assertive cinematography and visual effects, made for an entertaining spectacle that blurred the lines between reality and fantasy.
But just like any other parent, Boksoon is backed into a corner when it comes to dealing with her wayward daughter. She tries to keep a cool head in front of her daughter, but her "spoiled" daughter is just indifferent. She tries to create a different environment for her only daughter by building a greenhouse in the house, hoping that she will take a different path than she did. However, he soon sees his own (murderous) side in her, which causes an emotional rift in the perfect killer Boksoon. Boksoon's emotional turmoil is only revealed by her daughter, and as her daughter's struggles with school and relationships intensify, Boksoon's physical and emotional wounds are simultaneously aggravated in other places. The tortuous emotional path that Boksoon goes through as a mother is perfectly portrayed by Jeon Do-yeon.
While the Berlinale is known for its auteurist leanings and sensitivity to social issues, the genre film was well received by participating critics. Giovanni Ottone, an advisor to the Rome Independent Film Festival, called the film an early highlight of the festival and said it deserved to be in competition (rather than a Berlinale special). At the public screening, the film received an overwhelmingly positive response from a packed house. Of the three major film festivals, the Berlinale is the most accessible to non-filmmakers. In the eyes of general audiences who have watched Korean content on Netflix, Kill Boksoon perfectly fulfilled their expectations of what a 'Korean film' should be.
A provocative experiment in blurring
In Water by Hong Sang-soo
Hong Sang-soo presented his twenty-ninth feature film In Water, which he directed, wrote, produced, shot, edited, and scored. Invited to the Encounters section to showcase fresher films, In Water was one of the most unique and 'different' films of the festival. Hong, a regular in the Competition section for several years, had wondered why his latest film had made the jump to Encounters, and after its brief 61-minute running time, the questions were put to rest and heads nodded in agreement.
The story follows an actor who is tired of acting and wants to test his creativity, so he makes a short film with two friends. Most of the scenes are presented through a watered-down, blurry, out-of-focus lens, like an impressionist masterpiece. The low-quality blur that fills the screen from the very beginning is a disconcerting first impression of In the Water, and the ambiguous narrative that follows, with varying degrees of blurriness, left the Berlin audience, already familiar with Hong Sang-soo, somewhat baffled.
The protagonist's desperate search for inspiration conveys Hong's self-reflexive concerns about filmmaking through a series of abysmal images. While Hong's trademark drinking scenes provide a brief moment of sharp focus, the young men's booze-soaked conversations ring hollow. The emotional and witty characters of his previous films are thinned out in this one, and the story is told in a vaguely earnest manner, focusing on the question of the reason for making a film. As is often the case with 'young' directors.
Hong Sang-soo's characteristic minimalist method of working without a script and intuitively on location continues in In Water. He searches for the right location, one that is beautiful but not too beautiful, and creates a narrative that fits the location he has found. The characters that move freely through the frame between the static camera are probably Hong Sang-soo himself, wandering around to capture something meaningful. Hong's gritty, back-to-basics work is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the blockbuster flavor of Avatar: The Waterman a few months earlier. As if to mock the idea that cinema is a product of technology, his new experiment reaffirms that high technology and cinematic artistry are two different things. The provocative experiment of Outfocus, in particular, may signal that Hong Sang-soo's world is entering another dimension.
When we met with the audience after the screening, Hong admitted that he had gotten a little tired of sharp films, and at first he thought the blur experiment was ridiculous. But when it came time to decide whether to sharpen or not, the idea of blurring didn't go away, and In Water was the result. The film's reception was polarizing, but once again Hong Sang-soo brought a new theme to the world.
In addition, Park Sye-young's The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra was selected for the Berlin Critics' Week, although it was not an official Berlinale selection. Widening the scope a bit, CJ ENM co-financed Past Lives by Celine Song (Competition), Green Night starring Lee Joo-young (Panorama) and The Quiet Migration by Malene Choi (Panorama), about the nostalgia of a Korean child adopted by Denmark, are also pan-Korean films that visited Berlin. As a result, it was not uncommon to encounter Korean language or Korean actors in theaters during the 11-day festival.
The Korean films, although not selected in the main categories, were well received and contributed to the diversity and artistry of the Berlinale. If the past few years have been a time for Korean cinema to break through and establish its own place in the history of world cinema, it is now entering a phase of building on this and gradually expanding its territory. The 73rd Berlinale will go down as a triumph for European cinema, but the vibrations left by Korean cinema will remain a significant achievement.
Jaewon Sheol is the editor-in-chief of Cultura, a Korean cultural magazine, and the publisher of K-Writer, a Korean-US magazine with offices in both Korea and Los Angeles' Koreatown. He specializes in cultural commentary and has written numerous articles, with a particular focus on the film industry. In 2023, he was appointed as an international voter for the Golden Globe Awards due to his recognized expertise.
Photo Courtesy of 2023 Berlin International Film Festival
* 《Cultura》 2023 March (Vol. 105) *
