A Frozen Flower

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.

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.

A Frozen Flower got billed here as "The Year's Sexiest Blockbuster", and writer-director Ha Yu's movie could probably be also billed as an equivalent to Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, given its period setting and schemes within a royal household, plenty of gorgeous costumes, opulent production sets, with a tinge of wire-fu martial arts and a chock load of mixed romances thrown in for good measure too.

Set in the Korean Koryo era where it's under the control of the Mongol's Yuan Dynasty, the current gay Koryo King (Joo Jin Mo) sets up his own elite bodyguard troops, recruiting 36 young boys to undergo extreme training and eliciting pledges of unfettered loyalty from this group of trusted men. Amongst all he favours Hong Lim (Jo In Sung), and spent plenty of personal and quality time with his pet, from the open plains hunting to the courtyards training, right down to the games both play in the royal bedroom. Nepotism runs in the royal household, since it's an open secret as to why the King appoints Lim as chief of his bodyguards, undoubtedly also because of the advantage of up close and personal already from within the royal chambers.

The male-centric world soon got shaken by the introduction of the Yuan princess to be Queen (Song Ji Hyo) in an alliance forged by marriage, and I guess you can see how this third party could cause severe problems. Pressure mounts when the royal family is expected to bear an heir, otherwise a successor to the throne will be appointed. This displeases the King of course, given someone on the outside waiting in the wings for his demise, but then his sexual preference also meant that he can't get it up. So in desperation, he crafts a crazy plan in over to hang onto power, and that's to order his lover Hong, to impregnate the Queen and produce an heir whom he will accept as his own, thereby protecting his throne. The Queen reluctantly agrees of course, but as a woman who accepted to be loyal to the kingdom, she's got to do what is best for her husband. As for Hong, well, it's duty toward both King and Country.

What this does is in fact to push both the Queen and Hong into an uncontrollable sexual awakening, which the rest of the film pretty much centres upon, dealing in relationships, and the vast emotions that come along with it, including the negative ones like jealously and ultimately, rage and hatred. While at first Hong couldn't get himself to betray his first love, I guess it probably is easier for any guy to treat sex as sex without an emotional baggage, though it did tickle Hong's heart that perhaps the female of the species was more interesting, and his breakaway from a male-centric relationship, was seen as a betrayal and treason to the King.

As for the Queen, the power of fleshly pleasures from this perverse consummation of a marriage, sees to it that she gains some strength in taking over some control in her restricted life, and plots to seduce Hong even more so that she could satisfy her lust, which for both parties, transform into a healthy heterosexual relationship in which the King obviously despises. I suspect there will be some quarters cheering the film in depicting that homosexuality can be cured by a good dose of sex to open their minds, but I thought it was more of a matter of choice and opportunity being presented here, since the sexual preference get contrasted between Hong and the King's is quite clear – one's obviously following the heart, the other his orders, which slowly developed into silent insubordination, before the heart fully takes over. In any case this romantic triangle will push and probe when you're viewing this, as there are plenty of insights to gain from if you were to put yourself into the shoes of either party, and determine how you would react to the sequence of lustful events.

The film of course goes beyond love and lust issues, although Hong and the Queen go at each other like jackrabbits. There's also a subplot involving the usual political intrigue (having the film set in a period setting and not dwelling on this seems wasted), with political assassinations bringing about some major set action sequences. I felt it would have probably benefited audiences with no clue about the Yuan dynasty control over Korea at the time if this was given a little more focus, but I suppose it's left to further reading on our own. Or had a bit more about the bodyguard unit because they were being utilized for a lot more activities like counter-espionage rather than just plain protection purposes.

This being Singapore, you'll get to see the more explicit heterosexual scenes between the bisexual and the straight woman quite intact, though the only (at least the only one that made it) homosexual one was butchered for the most parts. Those who prefer their films intact could go opt for the DVD instead, as the Koreans have already released this, which includes a limited, unrated 2-disc edition.

I've just finished watching it it's such a great move it's like an emotional rollercoaster but the movie has a lot of erotic scenes I love their acting God their facial expressions were priceless the ending was full of emotion gooood I'm dying here I love the movie

Put Korean skills together with gorgeous costumes, settings, and actors--then add a great director and three skillful actors in the leads--especially the talent of Jo In-Sung who can say more with his eyes and the gentle play of emotion across his face than most actors ever approach, and you have a great movie. It is sexy, thrilling, part love story part sword and martial arts and all intrigue. I disagree that the film is homophobic: the king's mistake plays out clearly. The theme is more about obsession on the king's part and resultant outcomes of jealousy, rage, and revenge. There is no question he is at fault: not for 'turning' the chief gay--but for setting up the entire tragedy himself and misunderstanding the power of love. If you want to keep your lover, find someone else to 'do the deed.'