Chang

I saw this film in the theater in Seoul in 1997, and have never forgotten it. It's now out on DVD WITH English subtitles, and I'm sure it'll get quite a looksey from the foreign community.

A young woman is forced into prostitution after being tricked into thinking she'd work as a beverage seller. She's an orphan who has never known love in her life, and seeks a man who will love her unconditionally. She soon learns about the flesh trade, first as a novice hooker then as a veteran who hooks up with men who eventually dump her because of her past.

The movie is a journey into Korean prostitution from the 1970s to the 1990s, and the director does a good job by not making the movie overly sentimental. Prostitution still holds a major role in Korean society, with an estimated 20 percent of Korean women having held jobs in the "men's entertainment industry." The DVD is also apparently uncut, as it includes a pretty racy scene that was cut out in the videocassette release.

The life of woman is an eternal issue both in the feminism and the macho camps, but this movie is not dealing with it as an issue but as a discourse. Why a trajectory of one normal prostitute's life can powerfully demonstrate the social milieu of the Korean past; and to what extent her life can be paralleled to the normal life in the same context?

These two questions are cast throughout this movie and no answer is sought. Only the process of its exploration and contemplation is intended and the Great Director Kwon-taek I'm concurrently maintains the suitable distance from the actual events in order to render the depth of objectivity.

His cinematography hyperboling the huge mountain cliff alludes to the great obstacle for a woman who comes to live a tattered life, and this is also one of the most important elements on the Korean traditional painting. The Korean traditional aesthetics become symbolically transferred into the traditional restraint of Korean society for a woman who had no choice but to take the path of a prostitute, and this metaphor becomes a brilliantly shining explanatory tool in the movie without any detailed lines.

A masterpiece of the maestro who has now come in front of a mirror in order to reflect the rear side of the contemporary society of Korea. If Mikio Naruse is still alive, he will definitely cast a jealousy on this work.