Seon-Kyoung Ahn	...	(Director)
Seon-Kyoung Ahn	...	(Writer)
Wu-jae Jang	...
Ji-a Park	...	Seong Nyeo
Ji-Yeon Park	...	Ma-ri
Sang-hoon Park	...	Seong-chan
Sun-young Lee	...	Cinematographer

Comments: Okay, damn. After experiencing Han Ye-ri who uses her real life name in A Quiet Dream, I had to give this one a re-watch. She's just a puffy cheeked little kid, but you can see she's got presence, charisma. She's the opening scene of the movie and I guarantee it is a scene that will make you recoil in your comfy chair, as will the later scenes of her literally crawling the walls of a dingy little motel room where she's going to squirt a little baby onto the floor. This movie is nuts. No way it could live up to how much it impressed me the first time.

Correction: Yes, Way! It's probably the most visionary (stylistically) and accomplished debut I've ever seen. It gets Lynchian dark and uncomfortable, but it's written/directed by a woman so it has motherhood issues instead of mommy issues. The first 20 mins of story setup kind of suck. You won't think the main male character, an Australian-Korean speaking English, will be able to pull off anything worthwhile. Then story takes a backseat to poetic framing and lighting (a dark blurry amber glow), beautiful fucking music, and general wtf-ness. It's powerful. It's dark. It's logic is emotional. Then it pulls back and finishes.

I've been waiting four years to see the director's 2013 followup, Pascha. sad30.gif

I wish this was a film we could all watch/re-watch together because after two viewings I still don't get it (completely). How many women in this movie are the guy's mother? If any. What happened in that first scene, exactly? WTF is the ending all about?

Is that scene where the guy, in one location, is crawling to his door while Ye-ri, in another location, is crawling toward her door ... is that too over-the-top ridiculous or freaking brilliant? The scene itself is unquestionably brilliantly executed, but after it's over and its metaphorical details are made explicit, do you facepalm or just wrinkle your brow?

I really can't believe how masterfully crafted this film is--for a debut or otherwise. And/but it does go to those Lynchian extremes where the over-emoting might derail it but I think the director successfully tilts the entire film sideways and normalizes it, assuredly (sort of the way Sono does).
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Everything about this film is perfect ... except that it doesn't lend itself to slick and easy summation. It's beautifully shot, powerfully acted, perfectly directed, and the soundtrack, while used very sparingly, when called upon to augment the emotion of a scene, is masterfully executed.

OK. That's some hyperbolic praise. This film blew me away. The funny this is, though, I'm not sure I really got it, or got all of it. In a nutshell the film is about a thirty years young Korean man in search of his biological mother. With extras.

Having said that, and saying that this film touches on many of the related topics of child abandonment, identity, adoption, loss, being young and pregnant and alone (not to mention some very pointed exposition on Korean nurseries and clinics), in very powerful ways, it's not a message film nor an after-school special level catharsis. It's way weirder, and more literary, and much more poetic. The film is more like a painting than a story. The second act is pretty much a riff on Albert Camus' Le Malentendu. And what a second act it is. It reaches Shakespearean levels of emotional intensity that are downright scary, getting jiggy with some twisted Oedipal sidewinder concoction. I wouldn't call this an art-house film, though. It doesn't come off as pretentious or intentionally vague even though parts of it might seem random and inexplicable.

So what is it I didn't get? The film opens abruptly with a scene, likely to cause you to recoil in your seat, of young girl in somewhat primitive circumstances having an abortion. It's not explicit, more fly-on-the-wall view, but it's potent. And I think it's an abortion. Could be she is going to deliver the baby and sell it. Given the stage of her pregnancy the latter is more likely, and the film seems to want to ask if there is a difference. [UPDATE: upon a second viewing, it's clearly option #2, but I'm leaving my error because I'm in favor of letting this represent my initial reaction] Either way, she is in full traumatized mode. The confusing part is that this girl continues to appear in the film, pregnant, with ambiguous results, in a sort of parallel storyline. I'm not sure if she is to represent the boy's mother or simply another scenario. I'm not sure at what level this film plays with time, reality, representation, and/or dreams. It's more like a visual poem than a movie and really only my left brain wants to know. There's nothing frustrating or loose-endy about it if you just let it be.

After that first scene, the film settles into more standard drama for a bit, with a little cultural essaying and identity politics, as it introduces us to the young man who will be our protagonist in search of his biological mother. He is with his girlfriend who wants to support him but also proposes to him and suggests it might be better if the two of them start their own family instead. The young man says he's not ready for that and abandons her to go find his mother.

I should point out that this young man was raised in Australia and speaks English. His Korean is broken at best and this fact adds to the difficult dreamlike second act when he returns to Korea and ends up at a broken down hotel run by two widows, one of whom may or may not be his mother. I'm not even going to begin to try and dissect the second act. Suffice to say, the ambiguity of this film is precise and spectacular. As is the performance of Park Ji-a as the younger of the two women inn-keepers.

Park Ji-a, apparently going by simply ZIA now, is the only person associated with this film that I know anything about. She's been in a few Kim ki-duk films, most notably the lead in Breath (Soom), and I've always liked her oddball beauty and thin but extremely muscular frame. It's not surprising to see her here as she has always seemed at home in Kim's dreamy structures. And I think a Kim ki-duk directorial comparison is apt here, but I can't tell you a thing about the person who directed this movie, AN Sun-kyong (Ahn Seon-kyeong?).

Park Sang-hun (Park Sang-un?) is very good as the young Korean man, and I guess I do know about Park Ji-Yeon who plays his girlfriend. Her role is mildly minimal but she does a fine job. I'm not sure who plays the young pregnant girl (Kim Ye-ri?) but her performance is amazing. She practically steals the show and you will feel very strongly for her.

Maybe you're wondering how something like this ends. Well, endings are the most difficult part, aren't they? To tell the truth, things wrap up with a slightly melodramatic resolve but I didn't really care one way or the other about it. The film had to stop at some point. I can't imagine that even if you hate the ending that it would spoil the preceding journey. This is a film that should be seen by anyone interested in good and/or powerful film making. That's all I'm saying. It's not about the story or the message. It's about the colors and the brush strokes. And the meter. Just wow.

★★★★★

Summary: Based on a play "The Misunderstanding" (Le Malentendu) by Albert Camus

Sung-chan was adopted to Australia when he was 3 years old and came back to Korea to look for his birth mother after 30 years. With no documents left, he is frustrated and wanders around Dae-gu city where he was abandoned. Unexpectedly he stays in a motel run by 2 widows whom he believes are his grandmother and mother. Since neither of them recognizes him, he doesn’t reveal his identity. One night, in this abandoned place a great tragedy begins.