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Female director Kim Dong-Myung‘s The Liar (right) casts the wonderful Kim Kkobbi as Ah-Young, a compulsive liar, a Walter Mitty-type chancer, who lives a parallel fantasy life to compensate for her own dire reality. Dressing and acting exactly as she’d like to be, she’s constantly brought down to earth by the pressure of supporting her slacker brother and alcoholic sister. And she’s not only lying to them, but also to her colleagues, her boyfriend, everyone. But surely it will all eventually catch up with her and fall apart? Or can she sustain the fiction?
A mix of Midnight Cowboy and Ken Loach, Wild Flowers is hard-hitting in its content, but also poignant. Park Suk-Young‘s look at those on the fringes of society and on the edge of crime won Actress of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival for Cho Soo-hyang, but in truth any of the main three actresses could win this award. Starting with jolting, hand-held scenes of two feral young women on the run, who take a third under their wing – the Wild Flowers – they soon find they’re plucked out of the wilderness and coerced into a shocking life of prostitution. The threat of violence is always there, but with help from a deaf, dumb electrician they try to make their escape. But can they appeal to the conscience of the one ‘good pimp’ who finds them, even though he himself is pursued by his violent boss?
Starting as an awkward comedy of manners, End of Winter from Kim Dae-Hwan, centres on a family gathering to mark the retirement of the academic patriarch. But the dad is disinterested and drinking heavily, the mum is bossy and rude (and steals every single scene), the daughter-in-law is eager to please, one son is constantly on the phone and the other is a completely spoilt mother’s boy. Dad drops a bit of a bombshell when he says he’s getting a divorce, and as the family falls apart, the snow falls heavily around them, cutting them off, so they’re stranded together, seething with resentment. Tongues loosen, tempers rise and some priceless scenes ensue.
Finally, two of the best, most intriguing and satisfying films of the festival. The Classified File (right) from Kwak Kyung-Taek is based on a real kidnapping case from 1978, and stars Kim Yun-seok as cop Gil-Yong. The brilliant, full-tilt opening sequence introduces all the characters and plunges us into the action. The mother is distraught and consults a succession of mystics, the father doesn’t want the police prying too much into his affairs. They’re able to pay off the media and keep the story of their daughter’s abduction suppressed, and the cops similarly headquarter their investigation in a basement, much like The Wire. But things head in a different direction once Gil-Yong is forced to team up with a guru, and the search for the kidnapped girl is relocated to Busan, with two rival police forces on the case together. Can the odd couple deal hack through the corruption that stands in the way of finding the kidnapped girl?
Uncategorisable, but larger-than-life, Alice In Earnestland is the promising debut feature from Ahn Gooc-jin. Lead actress Lee Jeong-hyun is Su-nam, a young woman who never gets the rub of the green. We start in the present, with Su-nam holding a psychotherapist hostage in her own office. But what’s driven her to this crime? Flipping right back to the start of the story – accompanied by an excellent, tense soundtrack – we see that everything that could go wrong always does. When she finds a man who loves her, she cannot help hurting him. She holds down multiple jobs, trying to keep their home; and when there’s one tiny ray of hope, and she might get a big payday from redevelopment, she’s determined not to let it be extinguished by those who are trying to get their piece of the property pie. In amongst the slings and arrows of her outrageous fortune, there’s an interesting sideswipe at the current worship of development and inflated property prices, not to mention an exploration of the idea and politics of deafness. But at the end you’ll remember the gory, sudden, almost comic-book violence and the incredible performance of Lee.
I can’t wait until next year’s festival.