Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 30/52 | Directed by Kim Ki-duk
Hee-jin runs a small fishing resort with a collection of cottages that she ferries customers to and from. One such customer arrives, a man named Hyun-shik, a caged bird in hand. Hee-jin helps him load and unload his baggage. She brings supplies to another cottage where a man fishes.
At night, she removes her panties and brings a canister of coffee to a group of three men at one cottage playing cards. One man invites Hee-jin into the cottage for sex work. Afterward, the man holds the cash in his hand, demanding she say something before he gives it to her. She says nothing, so he throws the money in the water. Later that night, the sex client steps outside to take a shit. He jumps on his cellphone to call his wife and daughter. Suddenly, hands emerge from the water and pull him in. Hee-jin emerges from the water at Hyun-shik’s cottage, an ikejime spike in hand.
The next night, Hyun-shik sits outside, gun to his head, awakened from a dream (a memory?) of coming across two people having sex and murdering them. Suddenly, he feels something sharp pierce his leg. He pulls away, blood pouring from his leg, to see an ikejime spike poking through the boards. It scares him so much that he fumbles the gun and accidentally drops it in the water. He looks over and sees Hee-jin rowing by, soaking wet.
The following morning, Hyun-shik decides to fish, making a makeshift lure from wire and setting up the pole. Hee-jin rows by and sticks a worm on the line. Sure enough, he gets a catch. makes a present out of wire — a moving sculpture of a woman on a swing. The film follows the two as their relationship enters dark, bizarre territory.
The imagery of the water and the cottages is serene and disarming. The music and cinematography almost suggest romance at times, especially with the way in which Hee-jin observes Hyun-shik. And like, it is technically a romance, but between two deeply hurt and disturbed individuals.
The film contrasts these moments of deceptive beauty with images like a cottage customer shitting in the lake, the camera just underneath his ass. The movie also has TWO scenes involving fishhooks and human bodies, both stomach-turning. We also see a LOT of animal killing and mutilation. Besides the fishing (which involves one client cutting slices off a living fish to eat and throwing it back in, and MUCH more), Hee-jin catches and skins a frog to feed to Hyun-shik’s bird.
Through our mute protagonist, we have a sort of mystery — not one we’re itching to solve, but a setting marked by clues that unveil pieces of her past that brought her to this moment. Hee-jin often behaves like a fish, the way she can stay underwater and never emerge gasping for breath. We draw a parallel between the disgusting treatment of the fish, abused and discarded, and the potential of her past. Hyun-shik’s bird also reflects his own state: trapped here, unable to die, but unable to leave for the crimes he’s wanted for.
Kim Ki-duk loves to create discomfort, and it often involves depicting women going through horrifying treatment. While I wouldn’t say I love this movie, I think it is more successful than Kim Ki-duk’s later film, Bad Guy, which has no moments of light or humanity. Still, the animal cruelty is too much for me. The right person may be sufficiently desensitized to need this for impact. I am not one of those people, thank goodness.
As Tracy Jordan once said, “Freaky deakies need love too.”
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tubiasiancc2023asiancinemachallenge2023asiancc2023week30house-of-psychotic-women