Ssang-hwa-jeom

"A frozen flower" is a great movie in terms of acting, scenes and directing. The whole combination made this movie a big hit.

1)In acting, two main actors and the actress did a great job. The characters are really complicated while facing opposite emotions such as loyalty and betrayal, love and hate, duty and passion, obey and disobey at the same time. It is not easy to show cruelty and affection at the same time as two main actors did great in this movie. The actress also was great in showing her two different kinds of relationship with them. They all did a great job to reveal these emotions in their mimics and actions. Their internal combat reflects in their acting amazingly.

2) In scenes, the movie includes both sexual scenes and historical scenes. While a lot of discussions has been made about the sexual ones, I believe they serve the purpose of the movie perfectly. They are not similar to some sexual scenes in other movies, when you feel like they are not necessary and are just there to make it an R rate movie. No. Here these scenes reflects the growing emotions and changing winds in the characters' souls. The historical scenes are vivid as well. full of colors, actions and harmony,each and every second of them serves the storyline and events. They help to actually take our minds to that historical era in Korean history. They show us how they pray, socialize and celebrate life events in that time, which is crucial to make us understand the characters, their duties, feelings and social aspects.

3) Directing and editing (metaphored as the second directing) are done perfectly. The camera angles are chosen wisely both in big shots in events and close ups while dealing with characters' mimics and inner feelings. Colors and designs works in harmony to elaborate the settings of that era. Imagine I saw the movie without any background in Korea's history; and it encourages me to search a bit to know more.

Great movie to watch, to enjoy and also to explore a different time era if you are interested.

About love. Its nuances, price and forms. Beautiful, powerful and aesthetic exercise. Fight scenes makes with delicate attention and the action as mountain river. Nothing new for a Coreean production. ButA Frozen Flower is interesting not only for colors and recreation of an era. Cntemporan questions are parts of a historical drama and the answers are sword blades. The tyrant is not a gray character. The loyal friend is not the traitor without conscience. The child is seal of crisis. Love is not a white page but a drawing in which two men hunt. The happiness and the sense of their search. In fact, a movie of porcelain. Game of emotions and sensitive description of feelings. The end, not special, is ribbon of a military book about peace essence.

In this story, we have a gay king, in love with his chief bodyguard, who needs to produce an heir with his queen. Unable to perform with a woman, he commands his lover bodyguard to do the deed in his stead. While initially this is met with resistance, the bodyguard obeys the king's command with unforeseen consequences.

This ended up being a great movie. It is well written, acted and filmed. The costuming, as well as the settings, are vibrant and ornate creating significant visual appeal. The characters are passionate and sincere. Even the music plays a part in pulling you into an experience.

I enjoyed this far more than I expected to and I love films that can surprise me like this.

One would be puzzled with the title of the movie: Frozen Flower, or better known as Frozen Flower Shop in Korean. While the title was related to a song performed in the movie, the plot is far stretched from what it seems to be.

Set in the Koryo Dynasty, the King (Ju Jin-Mo) and Hong Lim (Jo In-Seong), the chief of guards, are two best friends growing up together. Hong Lim devoted his life to the King, while the King sees him as a close friend he can trust, including the physical intimacy they shared with each other.

Under the pressure from the Yuan Kingdom of China for unable to have a son as a heir, the King comes with a solution: to allow the Queen (Song Ji-Hyo) conceived by Hong Lim. After sharing the intimacy with Hong Lim, the Queen began to meet Hong Lim in private, so as to fulfill her desire. It ends up in a tragedy which no one would have foreseen in the first place.

Directed by Ha Yu (Marriage is a Crazy Thing), Frozen Flower dealt with the modern day issues in a ancient Koryo Dynasty background. Homosexuality and adultery are the two topics which is a hush-hush in South Korea today, has been fully exploited and utilized in the palace. Issues such as conspiracy on overthrowing the King and control of power, which were commonly seen in a Korean drama, did not get a chance to see the daylight. It ends up as a supporting agenda to tell the story.

The movie revolves around the King, the Queen and Hong Lim, on exploring their desires for each other, betrayal and lust. Apart from that, there is nothing much left to see on the remaining characters, since they are dispensable, and their existence in the story do not give much support to the presentation of the story.

The affection between the King and Hong Lim were displayed through their daily conversations and actions to each other, such as feeding each other when sick, exchange of sword fighting skills and pillow talks. On the other hand, you will get more than what you see for the relationship between Hong Lim and the Queen, where both were seen having sex most of the time.

Frozen Flower can be easily related to any modern day love triangle relationship drama, or some modern day Korean drama sharing the similar plot. However, the movie is greatly similar to Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972) from HK's Shaw Brothers Studios. The 1972 production discussed similar issues, in the view of 2 women and a inspector.

If sword fighting and love triangle relationship is your cup of tea,Frozen Flower will be a good choice.

I found this movie accidentally which also led me to start watching several South Korean soap operas later.

I want to explain why the director employed such intensive sexually explicit scenes in the movie. One reason might be sex is the most powerful and primitive human behavior which would carry out the subsequently tragic endings.

All to be said and done, this movie gave me such reflections which I felt the story couldn't be better. The struggling between conscious and desires is forceful enough to overwhelm audience's mind. The scenes and customs were also splendid in details.

One thing I would like to point out is I watched both English and Chinese subtitles of this movie. Not to mention that Chinese version is way better. I think the language barrier can affect how you see the movie. The culture difference between east and west also have impacts.

It is loosely based on history. The plot was unexpected and mind blowing. Some reviews criticized the young actor who played the guard was not veteran enough. I would differ over that because the director tried to portray the young man's first love which would be longing, obsessed and addicted. The affection between the guard and queen was growing from lust to love. If you can imagine the society at that time which the two lovers could only express their affections privately, you will understand why the director used extensive sexual contents in this movie. However, the third part of their mating was excessive and unnecessary which only served for box office ticket sale.

If you like those eastern historian movies, you probably should understand the society some. Then you will see the movies in different way.