Berlinale 2010, Day 3 (Trouble with Actresses Counting the Damages)

Today shall be forever remembered as the day I got tickets for all three time slots! Also, the Delphi, our most hated Berlinale venue kind of made up for its ridiculously small entrance area and its general lack or organization with its take on the mandatory opening jingles: The piracy warning was not shown at all, which is highly unusual, only its soundtrack consisting of a three-tone gong could be heard. Also, the boring Berlinale fireworks jingle which has remained unchanged for a few years except for incrementing the festival edition number, got a special treatment: Instead of the fireworks, we were presented with a shot of a typical old and stuffy gallery/museum in which a middle-aged chubby museum guard was doing a dance vaguely symbolizing exploding fireworks and at the end, when the caption that’s part of the Berlinale logo came up, he suddenly shifted his hand and feet and posed as the bear from the logo, even including the bear’s slightly bulging belly! The whole cinema went wild.

Na-neun Gon-kyeong-e Cheo-haet-da! (I’m in trouble!, ?? ??? ???!)
Republic of Korea 2009, So Sang-min, 98?

Sun-woo is, despite winning a national award, a quite unsuccessful poet in Seoul, living off odd jobs and money borrowed from his college buddy Seung-gyu, an office worker. His only other support and connection to the “real” world is his down-to-earth, sweet long-time girlfriend Yun-ah, who inexplicably still really loves him, despite him being an irresponsible, fickle, instinct-led child of a man. Of course, she suffers quite a lot because of this, as “learning from experience” seems to be a completely foreign concept to Sun-woo and we are presented countless examples of that throughout the movie.

First of all, English is not suited for subtitling Korean or Japanese movies. I guess a language which has few formal levels of politeness fits a culture that wants to see itself as comprised of (relatively) equal people, but if you use it for subtitling a language which has mindbogglingly many grammatical forms reflecting the speakers’ hierarchy towards each other you can only fail. Many relationships and feelings between the characters were expressed through the level of (in)formality they used towards each other and I’m really lucky to have immersed myself in Korean TV shows through the last months as I was able to make out the differences in politeness at least, if not understanding the finer nuances of vocabulary.
While the movie had many comical, sometimes slightly slapstick moments, it really was quite a serious matter for Sun-woo and all the people around him who had to “suffer” because of his faults. And the strong point really was the portrayal of all the people around Sun-woo, how he acts towards them, how they react and why everyone does forgive him eventually…
Some woman described it as “aimless”, because on top if this subtlety it was using quite long, slow-paced scenes and shots only sometimes breaking this atmosphere for Sun-woo’s more extreme failures. Judging from the reaction of the audience it is fine to watch without the details, but I wouldn’t say it is a must-watch if you would only have english subtitles to rely on.

The Q&A afterwards was also quite insightful, despite being cut short cruelly by the following screening. One of the better questions was why the English title was “I’m in trouble!” and not “I’m sorry!” seeing as Sun-woo apologizes countless times through the movie. The director said that while it would not be a bad title at all, it wouldn’t really reflect Sun-woo’s childish character which causes him to be quite egocentric and so “I’m in trouble!” is more fitting of him and was therefore deemed more suitable. Another question was if and how the choice of main actor influenced the movie. To this he answered that originally Sun-woo was supposed to be more quiet and serious but then he realized that the playful, slightly slapsticky feel Sun-woo’s actor had was even better than what he had in mind. Also, said actor after being asked if he took the role because he saw it as a challenge or rather because he recognised something from himself in this character hastily exclaimed in english: “NONONO, not like him!”

Yeobaewoodeul (The Actresses, ????)
Republic of Korea 2009, Lee Jae-yong, 104?

Christmas Eve 2008: Vogue Korea decides to gather six top actresses for a photoshoot, something completely new for Korea, as everyone until then was scared of the actresses’ huge egos and how they would clash on set. As the women start competing for the prettiest dress and the best single shot, things start to become really tense, but as the shoot drags on and gets delayed they just decide t get wasted and have a quite manly, honest talk with each other…

Yeobaewoodeul heavily plays on the line between acting and reality: All of the actresses used their real names and real-life circumstances for this movie and while the director did lay out the setting and the conflicts the women should bring up among them he left them to ad-lib almost all of the dialogue and actually included all of them in the staff credits as scriptwriters. Naturally, all of the movie was hand-shot which I think wasn’t the best decision headache-wise, but I guess you have to emphasize the documentary feel. Part of the movie was great Diva Bitching™, part of it superficial women’s gossip and still another part was a quite honest discussion about the extremely high expectations people have of actresses in Korea. So it was enjoyable if you’re interested in this topic, but even more culturally specific than “I’m in trouble!”, because here it was in fact vital to catch the implied levels of respect and politeness among the actresses and if you don’t know a bit of the industry you can’t really enjoy Kim Ok-bin bragging about Song Kang-ho, or Go Hyun-jung, who looks remarkably like Lee Young-ae in some shots, complaining about her biggest rival Lee Young-ae!
Although I really enjoyed it, it has some flaws and I really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone not knowledgeable of Korean film industry, society and language (to some degree of course, you don’t have to get a PhD on it).

Fun Fact™: Just as I was writing the first review while sitting in a cinema and waiting for the next movie, an awfully (wannabe-)omniscient lady who presented herself as (as in: was not) knowledgeable of Asian cinema nagged quite a lot about both the Korean movies completely ignoring that they were quite culture-specific and someone who has no clue about Korea and more importantly doesn’t understand a bit of Korean naturally wouldn’t enjoy them half as much… Oh stupid people who think they’re hot shit, how they disgust me… (Yes, I am aware that some of the best movies tend to transcend cultural borders, but not every movie has to do that in order to achieve its goal and as an intelligent (film-)person you should be able to spot those movies…)

El recuento de los daños (The Counting of the Damages)
Argentina 2010, Inés de Oliveira Cézar, 80?

A young man visits some factory in provincial Argentina to inspect it and recommend improvements. The night before he arrived the manager died, so things are somewhat in disorder and soon he starts an affair with the widow, while things fall apart even more. From there on it’s good old Oedipus “killing” his father and “marrying” his mother…

I honestly did like only two things about this. First, I am a sucker for soundtracks consisting of a recurring main theme played on a single instrument. And if it’s minimalistic play on silence with few notes or chord progressions i get all hot and bothered… I also liked very much that this was integrated very Dogma-style, with the younger daughter sitting at the piano in the living room and (completely unfitting of a young teenager) playing the theme like she was improvising, it had a slightly surreal feel to it. The second thing were the black screens inserted throughout the movie, each containing a number starting at one and then counting up. They were displayed every time a “damage” directly caused by the inspector’s presence in their lives was revealed. Hence, the title of the movie. Quite nice and it was great to hear the queit knowing “Aaah”s from the audience after each number, while more and more people realised what the numbers were about.
Other than that: Pacing issues, revealing too much too early, giving ridiculously obvious clues and worst of all: frequent, long panning shots with out of focus camera. Out of focus (if it’s the whole picture) is tiring on the eyes in itself but at 24 frames this goddamn panning is giving me eye cancer! Commendable affort trying to reinterpret the legend of Oedipus, too bad the execution sucked so much.
Some random girl even shouted “La~ngweilig” (Bo~ring) as the credits started to roll. Also, on a very personal note the posture, voice and general negative aura of the directorwoman (how the hell are they called correctly) drove me out of the cinema before even the first question. I’m awful, I know.