Bittersweet symphony

The misleadingly pastoral overture to Kim Jee-Woon’s latest film offers an image of a swaying willow tree with the words ‘That which moves is neither the branches or the wind, but your heart and mind’.
Cut to the second act and this zen tranquility has given way to bloody vengeance, banana-skin gore and body pile-ups. It may be stated, with little fear of contradiction, that A Bittersweet Life is typical of what we’ve come to expect from a South Korean film. And you won’t hear any complaints from this quarter.
“Perhaps humour and horror share the same character,” suggests Mr. Kim. “Be it humour or horror, it has underlying potential to amplify the effect when it outbreaks under unexpected circumstances. Simultaneously, the audience experiences the state of absurdity. Humour and horror reveal their true merits when the audience accepts this circumstance as reality. Maybe I was born with the rhythm and the breath of these two disparate characters which nest under my senses. Not that I deny what’s nurtured.”
Born in 1964, Kim Jee-Woon began his career as a stage actor, then a stage director. An avowed slacker, he first came to prominence when his script for The Quiet Family (1998) won an industry award.
“I was leading a life of a daydreamer,” he recalls. “I had neither job nor any intention to get one, which, by the way, never made me feel miserable. After having led this lifestyle for about 10 years, I found myself left with a broken heart and a broken car. I needed a good sum of money to repair my car, so I set out to write a scenario. Luckily, I won the contest and became a director.”
Improbably, the inexperienced Kim decided to direct the project himself. The Quiet Family’s blackly comic-horror – derived from a family struggling to run a rural hotel without actually murdering the guests – went on to take the Best Film Award at the Portugal Fantasporto Film Festival and was remade by mondo Japanese horror-meister Takashi Miike as The Happiness Of The Katakaris.
Kim’s next film, The Foul King (1999), an unhinged farce about a mild-mannered bank-clerk turned professional wrestler was invited to numerous film festivals, including the Berlin International Film Festival. His work for the portmanteau film, Three (2002), co-directed with Nonzi Nimibutr and Peter Chan, would indicate the emergence of a dazzlingly cryptic editing style. This disquieting technique would help define 2004’s endlessly inventive chiller A Tale Of Two Sisters, a film that wiped the floor with the Matrix sequels at the Seoul box-office.
“Coincidently, both Sisters and Three are about painful memories. I agonized over the way to show the process of assembling the fragments of memories piece by piece. When you look at each piece of a mosaic, you do not know what the full picture looks like. You only see the full picture in the process of putting together the pieces, and my crypting editing style is intended to stimulate my audience in the same way. The editing had to concord with the theme of these movies – painful memories that you want to erase completely. I thought this crypting editing style was suitable.”
Bizarrely, while A Tale Of Two Sisters gained rave notices from around the planet, certain upstanding Korean critics would take issue with what they perceived as the film’s indecent use of naked feet. As if to spite them, Kim introduces Shin Min-Ah, Bittersweet’s femme fatale, from the ankles up.
“In A Bittersweet Life, the main character, Sun-woo, lost everything because he could not extricate himself from the impression,” explains Mr. Kim. “Hee-soo’s imprinted in a single moment. Therefore, her first appearance had to be striking, so I revealed the actress ‘Shin Min-A’s impressive legs. It was rather an expression of indifference to a few conservative critics than an intention of active antipathy towards them.”
A Bittersweet Life wrings all manner of nasty surprises from the traditional noir template. As the film’s hero inevitably succumbs to the charms of the boss’ wife, a cruel and delightfully absurd cycle of revenge begins.
“I like absurdity,” he says. “It is an expression of most filmic nature. For example, it is different from the realistic description of violence shown in films such as Irreversible. Such description leads to a feeling of abomination or lasciviousness, whereas the same level of violence in films of Martin Scorsese’s or Quentin Tarantino’s pulls verisimilitude with humor. Why? Because the aiming point of these scenes are different. The latter intends to fertilize the filmic expression we share and enjoy, whereas the former aims to extract an extreme reaction. Therefore, the former leads to discomfort, and the latter, delight.”
Mr. Kim takes particular pleasure from the thought of A Bittersweet Life playing in this part of the world.
“Nobody will ever understand how fantastic and happy I feel about having my film shown in Ireland.”