Stupid Sports Clichés, Vol. 63,905

After Idaho scores on a long pass play to go ahead of Hawai'i 14-7 early in the game:
"Get your safety belts on--this one's gonna be a shootout!"
I guess that's a drive-by shootout?

Cathartic Columbus Day

Happy End (해피엔드), dir. Jung Ji-woo (정지우), 1999.

It can't be just dumb luck that this would be the film I chose to watch on Columbus Day of all days. (For the uninitiated, today would have been my 18th wedding anniversary. Columbus Day is far and away my least favorite day of the year.) I don't want to give too much away about this film, lest any of you should decide to see it (highly recommended); suffice to say it was a cathartic experience for me. And I now have an answer to the oft-posed question "who would you choose to play you in a movie?"

Choi Min-shik plays Min-gi, a down-on-his-luck banker. He's recently out of work, and is doing a fairly lousy job of coping, spending hours reading (but not buying) romance novels at a fabulous used bookstore, or sitting like a dead thing in front of his TV set, watching cheap soap operas or football matches. His wife Bora, played by the fabulous Jeon Do-yeon, has a successful career (it's not clear, but she may have only returned to the professional ranks as a result of Min-gi's unemployment) and looks at her husband with a mixture of disgust and regret. Their only interaction seems to consist of her nagging him about his housekeeping, about his motivation, about his hobbies. Oh, and by the way she's having a torrid affair with her former boyfriend, who just so happens to be her employee.

I mean, really, stop me if you've heard any of this before, mm'kay? There are two major differences between this couple and my own marriage, though: they have a little baby (although it is far from clear who the father of the baby actually is), and Jeon Do-yeon is hot, hot, hot.

Min-gi is a perfectionist, cutting up empty milk cartons for recycling and recording mileage on the family car in an ever-present notebook. This is purported to be the banker in him coming out, although it seems closer to OCD. This close observation of the mundane in his mundane life provides him with several clues towards his wife's infidelity. At first he just back-catalogs these signs; if my own experience is of any relevance, it is because he genuinely doesn't want to know where that road might lead. But before long, the mounting evidence can no longer be ignored.

Here, about halfway through, is where the movie stops being about me, and starts being about the me I so wish I could have been.

Min-gi never directly confronts Bora about what he suspects (at least, not yet), but rather than continuing to stumble over clues, he starts to investigate. And although Bora admonishes her lover for not being careful about hiding their liaison, she's the one who makes the key mistakes (no pun intended), and Min-gi's investigation is quick, easy, and thorough. Still Min-gi takes no action, until one evening when Bora is forced to choose between her lover and her baby, and makes the wrong choice. This pushes Min-gi to the point of action. I can't tell you what that action is without spoiling the film, and I'm not sure I can even hint at it. Suffice to say that it's lifted straight out of many fantasies I have had over the past five years. I'm glad I saw this at home on DVD, because had it been in a theatre, my loud and sustained cheering might easily have been misinterpreted.

And that is, of course, where this stops being a film review and starts being a personal response. If I were coldly, objectively reviewing this movie, which frankly I think I would be unable to do, I might object to the resolution as being misogynist even for a misogynistic society like Korea. (Jung does, however, go to great lengths to both masculinize and demonize the character of Bora, for what it's worth; she's not just a cheatin' wife.) While objectively I can't condone the actions of Min-gi the Korean banker, subjectively I cheer on--lustily--the actions of Min-gi the Fiddlesticks doppelganger.

Jeon is wonderful in her role, as she is every time out of the box. Although she is appreciated in a smallish circle of cinephiles (she has been honored with a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival), Jeon is a great star who deserves to be much more well-known worldwide than she is. I imagine I could stop people in downtown Eureka all day and night and ask them who Jeon Do-yeon is without getting one correct answer, and that's a shame, especially since they'd all know who Paris Hilton is.

But despite Jeon's great (and oh-by-the-way frequently unclothed) performance, this is Choi Min-shik's film right from his first appearance in the bookstore. Choi was a well-known as a tough guy at the time of this film's release (he had played the ultimate North Korean bad guy in Shiri earlier that year), and this performance is very much against his type, both from his earlier work and his physical presence. Consistent with his character's moods, he rarely speaks, but still clearly conveys everything Min-gi is thinking and feeling through his performance. He is simply outstanding. Fans worldwide who only know this great actor through his subsequent star-making performance in Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) might not believe that this is the same actor.

I've had this on my shelf for over a week now, and delayed watching it for one reason or another, until deciding this afternoon that this is the night. I had no idea how appropriate it would be. I anticipate that this will be my regular Columbus Day movie from now on. And tonight, I'll have happy dreams.