{"id":7436,"date":"2011-12-18T00:53:29","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T04:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=7436"},"modified":"2013-01-17T01:53:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T05:53:10","slug":"a-bittersweet-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=7436","title":{"rendered":"A Bittersweet Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in the mid-1990s, when gay cinema was just coming out of the closet and into the mainstream, there was a charming, formulaic lesbian comedy called The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love.<\/em> There\u2019s nothing particular special about the film and I can\u2019t face watching it again, since there\u2019s no doubt, with its quaint view of lipstick lesbians finding their way through high school and into each other\u2019s arms, that it would be incredibly dated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The knock on the film at the time was that it was generic, but it should be given a pass because gay filmmakers have to make their clich\u00e9d romantic comedies too, and they\u2019ll move on to more mature work once they get it out of their system. There\u2019s a subtextual wisdom in that notion; the best way to become fully accepted by society is to become boring and rote.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The same could be said about Jee-woon Kim\u2019s A Bittersweet Life<\/em>, as an example of the South Korean genre film* previously explored by Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, I\u2019m a Cyborg But That\u2019s OK<\/span><\/a><\/em>), Joon-ho Bong (The Host<\/em>, Mother<\/em>) and Sang-soo Im (The Housemaid<\/em>). These four filmmakers weave in and out of established genre material, whether it\u2019s the monster movie The Host<\/em>, the women-in-prison movie Sympathy for Lady Vengeance <\/em>or the military tribunal in J.S.A.<\/em>, or Kim\u2019s traversing through serial killers in I Saw the Devil<\/em> or mobster mechanics in A Bittersweet Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That might excuse the opening \u00bd hour of A Bittersweet Life<\/em>, which is where Kim tries to work out the kinks while going through well worn territory of the quiet but dangerous henchman, Sun-woo (actor\/model Byung-hun Lee from I Come with the Rain<\/span><\/a>, G.I. Joe<\/em> and Park\u2019s J.S.A.<\/em> ), so emotionally detached and on edge that he sleeps on his own couch instead of in a bed. He\u2019s assigned to protect the boss\u2019s mistress Hee-soo (played by Min-a Shin), who is much, much younger and, as \u201cPresident\u201d Baek (President seems to be an awkward translation for Head of the Family) is worried about, likely to stray. There\u2019s not much unique about the opening act of A Bittersweet Life<\/em>, Sun-woo is challenged by a potential emotional connection to Hee-soo which threatens to harm his working environment. No matter how much he deflects, she knows he\u2019s there to make sure she behaves, not to \u201cprotect\u201d her. Hee-soo presses him on being an enforcer, to which he states that he just works for a hotel (owned by the mob). She replies, \u201cSo you\u2019re an enforcer for the hotel?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s in the quiet moments between Hee-soo and Sun-woo where the movie finally loosens up. Kim has already shown us that he can make the camera look like it\u2019s dancing, with his tracking shots laying out the hotel\u2019s restaurant and bar, and during an early violent confrontation for Sun-woo. But the brutality that follows shifts from genre to genre almost imperceptibly; a face off against a group of foes has Sun-woo\u2019s adversaries looking like extras from a post-apocalyptic film (it is very Terminator<\/em><\/span><\/a>), mud and fire enveloping a warehouse during a post-burial bargaining. That A Bittersweet Life <\/em>eventually turns into a western in its final confrontations isn\u2019t the odd part, it\u2019s the way Kim goes about it. The third act slows down just as it gets started, opening with a scene with a gunrunner who loves looking cool and his toys, but moreso his toys. The film stops to be funny during this sequence, even engaging in some Laurel and Hardy-style wordplay. Kim\u2019s humor is what differentiates the film anyway, exemplified by a Godard-ian moment where a cleaning woman mops up the blood emanating from Sun-Woo, while he hangs upside down, pleading for her help.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The off-kilter humor is hardly the only thing that A Bittersweet Life <\/em>mines from fellow countryman Chan-wook Park\u2019s Oldboy<\/em>. So many scenes and moments, elaborate slow-motion battles with classical music, an obstinate villain who reads major infractions from minor points, a finale set on a glossy studio set surrounded by water, a young woman with a strange relationship with her much older keeper, and on and on. But Kim doesn\u2019t provide us with Oldboy<\/em>\u2019s gut punch conclusion** (which prevents me from re-naming ABS<\/em> as Ode-boy<\/em>), or any sort of ironic idea. No matter how good the acting, how stylish the visuals, or efficient the screenplay, A Bittersweet Life <\/em>never convinces us that it\u2019s not <\/em>a movie. We never get a sense of the mob hierarchy, other than how henchmen are forced into participating in a pyramid scheme of power, where they can\u2019t advance even if they\u2019re willing to prostrate themselves. It sounds illogical, but maybe that was the point all along?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>* The only notable South Korean filmmaker who has gone out on his own is Ki-duk Kim, who has created a specific brand of misery-inducing message films like Bad Guy, The Isle<\/em>, 3-Iron<\/em>, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring<\/em>. No matter the quality of the film (and he\u2019s quite prolific), you always know you\u2019re watching a Kim film.<\/p>\n

** The final scenes of A Bittersweet Life <\/em>suggest that Sun-woo has a cyborgian amount of fortitude, less so in the more sensible director’s cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the mid-1990s, when gay cinema was just coming out of the closet and into the mainstream, there was a charming, formulaic lesbian comedy called The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love. There\u2019s nothing particular special about the film and I can\u2019t face watching it again, since there\u2019s no doubt, with its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[8429,8416,5188,8427,8423,3161,153,8435,2635,1968,1814,277,6930,7823,8424,5230,5224,518,1567,8434,8432,8426,8431,8177,3287,8422,2775,8420,8417,3160,5189,8421,8425,8430,5225,8418,8419,8433,8415,8428,736,4190,2625],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}