And now for something more international.
South Korea's film industry has gone through something of a revolution, beginning a decade ago, after somebody realized that it's not that hard to make films of similar quality to Hollywood, rather than a quality that speaks of a country technologically lagging behind. Since Korea is a thoroughly modern country, if not moreso than the one Hollywood movies come from, it's not surprising that its film companies have decided to step up their game.
The result has given the world more than a dozen superb films, most of which go unnoticed by the very country they come out of, but win awards in film festivals and have taken Asia in general by storm.
If You Were Me is not one such film, but it tries its damnest to be and makes a pretty strong effort in the process. The concept here is six short films, all of which focus on a different aspect of Korean society that suffers from one form of discrimination or another. The candidates are not at all obvious, and many of the entries take a less conventional route to make their points. Each is done by a different director with a different cast and lasts roughly twenty minutes. Their quality, as one can expect, is all over the place.
But I think it's a perfect entry point for someone who knows nothing about Korean society. It's cynical as hell and a bit gruesome, but it will inform the ignorant about the most extreme cases of social disharmony and prejudice within their own society. As long as the viewer keeps in mind the fact that these are all exaggerated examples of trends that do exist, they should get a fairly decent overview of what Koreans have to go through on a daily basis.
"The Weight of Her" is the first entry. While the plight of an overweight teenage girl sounds like a story that could be told in any culture, weight is a particularly touchy subject in Korea. Much of the flim exaggerates the repercussions of lacking an attractive figure, but I do wonder how much of that is satiric hyperbole and how much is part of everyday life. I'll go on record saying that almost every Korean woman I know professes to be on a diet. It's extreme...and yet the results do look good. It's hard to blame a society that cares about their image when I originate from one that clearly doesn't. Anyway, powerful film, makes its point without subtlety, but it's not suited for subtlety either.
"The Man with the Affair" features two situations of discrimination, one I've heard of before and the other I haven't. The more serious social circumstance involves an ex-convict sex offender, who is labeled thusly on the door of the apartment in which he lives, and even in the elevator of the building. I'm not sure if this is a real practice in society, but I know that there's much discussion over releasing their identities to the public online. The other discriminated character is a young boy who routinely wets his bed, and suffers humiliation for it from the rest of the apartment complex. It's an oddball story that does a better job of driving home the sterility of apartment life than of describing the conditions of such discrimination.
"Crossing" details the daily tribulations of a man with cerebral palsy. This seems like an obvious choice for a victim of discrimination, but the feature fails to illustrate one important detail: it is rare to see disabled people on the streets in Korea. Society shuns then and prefers to keep them behind closed doors. The story is made up of disconnected scenes that ultimately never come together well, but are nonetheless adequately effective.
"Tongue Tied" is...well, I didn't actually watch it. I can't watch it. What I glimpsed of it seems to be an actual operation of a child's tongue being cut. Why does such a thing happen? Some parents believe that their children will be able to better pronounce English consonants if their tongue was physically altered to become more flexible. They actually pay to have this operation done...on their children. It's as sick a concept as it is a film. I just wish it were presented in a watchable manner.
"Face Value" is the most bizarre of the six, and the least clear in terms of the discrimination seeks to illustrate. It treads over ground already covered in the first film by showing the difficulties attractive women sometimes have to endure. A woman of good complexion is working at a toll booth when a man starts questioning her about why someone with her looks is reduced to such a menial position. Unfortunately, a story develolps out of this and ends in a supernatural twist that really isn't befitting stories of this nature. This modest effort is quite a letdown.
Finally, "Never-ending Peace and Love" wraps up the series, and as it's based on a true story, it's not as imaginative as some of the others, though it's still cleverly told. The point behind this film could be told in a setting of practically any culture, but the fact that it's a true story that took place in Korea makes it even more haunting. A woman of Nepalese origin gets lost in a Korean suburb and her ethnicity is incorrectly identified by Korean authorities, who then throw her into a psychiatric asylum. This film is directed by Korea's most famous director (at least internationally), Park Chan-wook, whose film Oldboy is nearly universally praised. This short film likely inspired him to direct his later feature film, I'm a Cyborg But That's OK.
This collection is, if anything, certainly interesting. It's no award-winner, but as a collection of various topics centered around a specific theme, it definitely accomplishes its goal as entertainment and information. Though its box office sales were less than modest, it will hopefully pave the way for more interesting collaborations of this type.
Michael Aronson