aglobalcitizen I just finished reading all the previous reviews and I guess my review is going to be completely different. I am a big fan of Korean cinematography and by now I have watched approximately over one hundred Korean films. This movie is by far the most disturbing and difficult movie to watch at least from a female's point of view.The movie is divided into two different parts, two stories told from two main characters, two almost opposite accounts. The movie begins with the events that precede the final scene and only after that the rest of the parts are sequenced in order. The main male character is a total sleaze ball (actually, all the males in this movie can be categorized as such). The only thing he is interested is sex. When he finds out that the girl he was trying to have sex with is a virgin, his eyes light up as bulbs on a Christmas tree.The story from the guy's perspective is quite ordinary, nothing special. By the way, before arranging having sex with a virgin, he checks the hotel room for hidden cameras (that shows you some experience!) However, when we watch the second part, retold from the female's point of view, we see the horrible reality that women have to go through in modern day Korea. The female character has to perform sexual favors for her older brother (yes, it is almost incest). She has to defend herself from being raped by her immediate boss. Even though she feels sick on that day and tries her hardest to avoid having sex with the new-found suitor who is a total womanizer and even calls her by some other name in bed, she agrees to having sex with him and it brings her nothing but pain that she felt she had to endure.For all of you out there, THIS IS NOT A ROMANTIC FILM. In fact, it cannot be any farther from romance. It is a psychological drama, shot as a documentary with a twist, but there is no love in this movie. Sex - yes. Love - none. The final sexual scene feels like watching a girl being raped, even though it is a consensual rape. It is really disturbing and appalling.On a final note, the actress who played the main character, Lee Eun Ju, committed suicide after her last movie "The Scarlet Letter". She began suffering from insomnia after performing the nude scenes in that movie. Let me tell you, it all added up, this movie included. If she would stay away from the movies that portray women as victims and walking sex objects, she might be alive with us today. I also want to point out that it is the main goal of any art project, cinematography included, to purify people's souls and heal humanity, to evoke best feelings in our hearts, whether it is love, gratitude or sympathy, to pull the viewers up, not down. It is much easier to go downhill than uphill and there are plenty of directors who take the easy road. I would not recommend this movie for those who want to walk away with a nice clean feeling or for those who prefer watching romance. This is a well-done movie with a disturbing message, that is why I am having a difficult time to rate this one. I will probably leave the ratings blank.

Atavisten Here we follow an independent director with his writer and meet up with the rich sponsor of the movie, an owner of a gallery called "Growrich". The movie is split into two parts (which is not as gimmicky as it sounds) with 5 (?) chapters each, both with the same story told more or less the same way, from different angles. What angles are they? Some speculate the first to be the sponsors perspective and the second to be the female protagonists, which may very well be, what is certain however is that the differ in time, both are retrospects and the haziness of it all suggest quite some time has passed since the event. This is the definite highlight of the Hong Sang soo filmography for me with "Power of Kangwon Province" as a good second. The strict formalism applied here gives an edge to the realism and thereby en-chances it which I felt were lacking in some of his other movies like "Woman is the Future of Man". That being said, I watched this two times over to really appreciate how he deconstructs from the different angles. This is the work of a true master. Lee Eun-ju and the other actors did a wonderful job, cinema lost a big talent with her suicide 5 years after this movie. Rest in peace.

bastard wisher Hong Sang-soo really is probably the greatest director almost no one has heard of, at least from Asia if not the whole world. That said, I'm not sure I like this one quite as much as his earlier "The Power of Kangwon Province", if only because it doesn't quite have the same sense of distinct urban anomie that I love. It might be an all-around more well-constructed film though, if borderline too strictly formalist. It's too bad these are the only two films of his available on DVD because otherwise I'd make watching all of them a priority. It's funny that the film has such a rigid sense of structuralism and yet is infused with such a real, intimate sense of humanism. The film is divided into two halves (each with eight chapters), showing roughly the same courtship between a man and a woman, first from what appears to be his perspective, and then from hers (although the specific point-of-view is never directly announced and it is possible they overlap somewhat). This sounds pretty gimmicky, and in a sense it skirts that line, but like I was saying it is presented in such a straight-forward, empathetic way that it barely seems cerebral or detached at all. It's really quite remarkable, i think, what a truly empathetic tone the film has. Although visually somewhat similar to the work of the great Tawainese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, the film has none of Hou's pronounced sense of detachment or aloofness. Instead it feels incredibly intimate and humane. Still, the rigid structural devise, if not quite gimmicky, does create a certain repetitiveness, since unlike "Rashomon" the two versions of events don't usually differ in very overt ways (although there are some differences). I wouldn't normally call the film slow (as minimalistic as the camera style is, it moves along fairly briskly), but the repetition does make it seem like it drags at times over the course of it's two hour length. Still, it's overall a pretty great film. Some of the most honest, heartfelt, no-frills relationship stuff I've ever seen in a film, actually. The last scene in particular is one of the nicest things I've seen in a while.

Callisto According to the synopsis in the film festival booklet, the movie plays like a Rashomon of a love triangle. Well... kind of.Despite its provocative title, Virgin is essentially a romance, with a deflowering at the end of it. But it is told from the different points of view of the two lovers. The black and white film starts off with the man, Jaewoon, begging his girlfriend to meet him.We then go through 7 days/stages of the courtship from his point of view, and then the same 7 days/stages as how Soojung saw it. I saw the POVs as memories of what the two protagonists had of their courtship.The differences are subtle but I felt they were very real. People tend to have different perception of the same event, or they may remember different salient points, or even mix up memories.For example, in one kissing scene, Jaewoon remembers sweeping a fork off the table while Soojung thought it was a spoon. The events and dialogue also get mixed up as memories get hazy. For instance, a particular dialogue about drinking took place in two places in the different versions.I really enjoyed the movie even though I do not like the romance genre in general. It was something I could relate to. Especially in courtships, both parties usually have slightly differing views of how it REALLY happened.