Rodeu-mubi

South Korea is NOT the most liberal of countries and this movie is NOT the most well ordered of stories but it was interesting.

This is the third Korean movie that I've seen recently and if that's a fair sample, it appears that Korean filmmakers don't put a high value on a coherent story line.

I can't say that I enjoyed any of these films but they were all strange enough and visually interesting enough to keep my attention throughout.

As to this film in particular, the basic storyline is that a failed (straight) businessman is met by a gay drifter who is living among Seoul's homeless. Along the way they meet a wacky prostitute who falls for the drifter but his (unrequited) affection is only for the failed businessman he's adopted.

As with gay characters in most early films these guys are in for an unhappy end but its a strange journey to get us there.

The scenery is wonderful and the movie is touching and funny in spots but don't expect it to be all sweetness and light.

What surprise me the most the first time i saw this movie was the reaction of the characters, for a foreigner as me it was so hard to understand (even if i already like Asian cinema very much, this one was different by the reality of the characters which was implying the necessity to understand them, not like in Wong Kar Wai movies where it's more imaginary). Each time i saw the movie, each time i understood something more about their way of reacting to things, in this movie the past of the characters is really important to understand the actual situation, their despair etc... and we just have little hints of this past, we have to reflect on our own to understand, to guess and imagine what was their life before, what are their emotions... It's showing you how hard loneliness is, how hard social roles are to take... Each one by to sides of two people completely different, coming from different world, back ground...

A part from that this movie show some really beautiful landscape : the sea, the most beautiful is the cabbage in the mountain...

The most negative point that i see is the first scene of the film that i find of no use (that could have been great not to know anything about Dae-Shik till the middle of the movie) and the second one is that there is some clichés...

A Queer cinematic masterpiece. A brooding ,slow burning love story about a disgraced, suicidal bankrupt bondsman, who is helped by a gay, homeless drifter. The two decide to set out together to find a new beginning, as the drifter falls slowly in love with the straight bondsman. This is a gorgeous, tragic love story, teaming with style. The gentle, climax of the love story will have viewers swooning and sighing.

The film is stylistically a cross between Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together and the fractured family story style of Tsai Ming Liang's The River. A Majestic, Breathtaking, and heartwrenchingly tragic screen debut for South Korean helmer In-Shik Kim !!