Only
the proverbial critic who sleeps through press screenings
at major international festivals is unaware of the fact
that the Korean New Wave is the talk of the Far East.
Korean cinema of the 1980s changed dramatically for the
better when veteran director Im Kwon-Taek was joined by
a group of film-makers who emerged from, or were influenced
by, a colony of documentary and short film directors with
a personal vision. Of course, the main reason for the
continuing revival was the worldwide acceptance of Korean
cinema at major festivals. Cannes 2000, for instance,
has booked Korean entries in all major sections.
Hong
Sang-Soo's debut feature The Day A Pig Fell In The
Well (1996), discovered at the first Pusan festival,
was booked on the spot for festival programming
around the world. Born in 1961 in Seoul, Hong studied
cinema at Chung-Ang University and at various film schools
in California, Chicago and Paris. Returning to Korea,
he worked for the Seoul Broadcasting Station and, on the
side, made his low-budget debut film.
Asked
to comment on the success of this tale of a fragile relationship
between a would-be novelist and a married woman, Hong
responded, "I am not a storyteller. A so-called story
has its characters fixed, at least to some degree. I,
on the other hand, stress the attitudes of the characters.
Given a situation, characters
assume various attitudes and those, combined with my own,
make my film. This, I think, is all the theme of my film."
Two years later, Hong Sang-Soo was back at the third
Pusan festival with the critically praised, written-and-directed
The Power Of Kangwon Province (1998).
Set during a hot summer in Seoul, it explores the relationship
of a young woman to a married university professor,
their painful break-up, and their even more painful
encounter on separate outings to the same mountain temples
of Kangwon Province after which, they return
home even more lonely than before. Hong's latest feature,
Oh! Soo-Jung, can be viewed as the third
part of a trilogy on "love and desire between ordinary
people". Two men, Jae Hoon (Bosuk Jung) and Young-Soo
(Sung-Keun Moon), art students at the same college,
one older than the other, are attracted to the same
girl Soo-Jung (Eun Joo Lee), a virgin. Again, the foibles
of human behaviour and relationships come under the
microscope.
Ron
Holloway
