King protector

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.

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'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

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.

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.