La concubina

Yeo Jeong Cho displays her body in a few surprisingly graphic sex scenes in Kama Sutra like positions. The story is a Borgia type one with an evil queen who rules with ruthlessness to further her control. Her son has no power and his queen, played by Cho, makes attempts to save her father and keep her son safe from the scheeming queen. The scenery is gorgeous and the film a great one.

You would think this movie is solely a movie about two guys wanting the same woman and being willing to do anything to have her. While this is a part of the film it is only a small part of a much larger drama that has much more to do with mothers.

The title is a bit confusing and I can only assume that it was named such due to a "Spilling the Beans" moment in the film. There is sex but not in the volumes that one might expect by the title.

The acting was quite well and I could really feel the emotional energy from the female characters coming through. It was filmed well but the scripting was convoluted in places and could've been delivered just as well with a few things omitted.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. I liked our female characters and the obsessive nature, be it fueled by jealousy, lust or revenge, of the males. Glad I found and watched it and I will be recommending it as a nice work of dramatic historical fiction.

One might say there is a pun in my summary line ... maybe even two. That aside, the movie is really tight when it comes on the story. It is quite fast paced all things considering and especially if you think about how much it does pack in.

Concubine may suggest some erotic encounters - and if that is what you think and expect you will not be dissapointed entirely. Just do not expect this to be focused on that. The scenes of sexual nature have a meaning to the story and to the characters. They also move along the story or plot lines.

Having said that, I guess this was discovered in the West because of the main actress being a part of Parasite. This goes to show you, there is much to find in Korean cinema that we haven't yet had a chance to view yet.

You may not like how characters act and what they decide to do. The questions if we couldn't just love each other instead of being so suspicious towards each other ... well you wouldn't have this tension filled movie otherwise now would you?

This is probably a good, or maybe even great, movie. I struggled through the entire thing. I am a native English speaker with a Masters degree ... I CAN read English. The sub titles appear on the screen and are gone too fast for anyone to completely read. Countless times I had to stop the film and skip back to read the subtitle. It was IMPOSSIBLE to take in the subtitle content and to appreciate the beautiful photography. The subtitle appeared on the screen as the actor began to speak and then immediately disappeared as their line was finished. Leaving the subtitle up for perhaps another 5 seconds, as in other subtitled movies (and I watch a lot of them), would have solved the problem. Such a shame to ruin a beautiful film with such a stupid technical error.

Things jump quickly from one thing to another and it was hard to follow what was going on. Felt like a series on fast forward. Just couldn't keep up with the different characters. Why they did what they did isn't explained well.