Our Joyful Young Days

The second film in the series is entitled Our Sweet Days or Our Joyful Young Days (기쁜 우리 젊은 날, Gippeun wuri jeolmeun-nal), a 1987 film directed and co-written by Bae Chang-ho (배창호). Maybe there was something novel about this script in 1987 (I doubt it), but it's certainly been made a thousand or more times since then. It goes like this: Pathetic Loser falls in love with Dream Girl, and starts Stalking her. DG, who really should get a Restraining Order, instead is Gently Standoffish. PL persists. DG Goes Away, and PL is crushed. DG returns, and PL runs into her Quite by Accident. It turns out that DG Has Issues of Her Own. And so forth. Believe me, if you've ever seen a Korean melodrama, you know exactly where this is going, and even if you haven't, when it reaches what seems like a relatively happy ending point and there's still a half-hour to go, well, consider yourself warned.

The Pathetic Loser is played by the always reliable Ahn Sung-ki, veteran of more films than I can count, including some of Im Kwon-taek's better films (Festival, The Taebaek Mountains), huge hits like Lee Jang-ho's Eoudong, and classics like The Housemaid (made when he was 8) and Chilsu and Mansu. Ahn is still active today, taking elder statesman roles in such films as Im's Chihwaseon and Kang Woo-suk's Hanbando. Here, Ahn is asked to be the emotionally stunted, unsure and klutzy Young-min, and he doesn't do much with this thankless role. It might have been nice to see some emotional growth over the two hour running time; nowadays that would be expected from this genre, as it makes the emotional payoff in the final scene either richer or more sappy, depending on your tastes. Ahn, who is now and was then a better actor than he shows here, instead just mugs and cries his way to the inevitable conclusion. Opposite Ahn is the positively luminous Hwang Cine (or Hwang Shin-hye, 황신혜) in her film debut. Hwang was, for a time, Park Chul-soo's muse, appearing in five of his films in the 1990s, and while still active today, is perhaps better known for having a line of lingerie named for her. Here, she is mostly required to look both beautiful and unapproachable, and she has no trouble whatsoever with these requirements. Her role should actually have been the more interesting of the two (as I said above, she Has Issues), but her character is one-dimensional, existing just so Young-min has something to react to. Had this film been written from Hye-rin's POV, it would have doubtless been a better, or at least more interesting, film. Ah, well.

It's not a terrible film, and is certainly well made with some very good compositions here and there. If I had seen this in 1987, before I grew bone-weary of this genre, I'm sure I would have liked it a lot better than I do today. I wouldn't buy the box solely for this film, but it wouldn't keep me from buying it, either. And anyway, there's really nothing wrong with looking at Hwang Cine, "the most perfect face in Korea," for two hours, now is there?*

All the major players here (Bae, Ahn, Hwang, and co-screenwriter Lee Myung-se) will reunite the following year for Gagman, Lee's directorial debut and the next film in this series. I'm somewhat less than breathless in anticipation.

The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 ratio, sort of; it's enhanced for 16x9, making the display ratio actually 1.78:1, but I won't quibble. The print, apart from a few speckles, looks very good. Audio (Dolby Digital stereo) has a hiss, but it is also quite good. Subtitles are also good; perhaps not quite as good as those in Yeong-ja's Heydays; "in" and "on" get mixed up occasionally, and there's a laugh-out-loud moment when the name Lee Strasberg shows up as 'Lee Streetsbourg', but these are minor issues. Again there is an unsubbed director's commentary track, as well as a trailer, poster, and photo gallery.

*Most of this background information on Hwang is taken from Darcy Paquet's brief profile of her at the indispensible koreanfilm.org, which is also the source of the photo of Hwang used above. Now excuse me while I go buy a Hwang Cine thong...

Yeong-ja's Heydays

One of my original intentions when starting this blog was to dabble in film reviews. I've started to review the contents of a box set of "Korean Movie Classics" for another site, and decided that I should cross-post them here as a way of fulfilling that original goal.

The first title is from 1975 and is variously titled Young ja: On the Loose (that's what the keepcase says) or Yeong-ja's Heydays (the name I commonly find on the internet); the Korean title is "영자의 전성시대" (Yeongja-ui jeonseongsidae). It was written and directed by KIM Ho-seon (김호선); according to KMDb, it was his second feature as a director in a career that ran to 15 films over 22 years; I admit I've never heard of him or any of his films. However, according to Darcy Paquet, this was the fourth biggest box-office hit of the 1970s in Korea. I'm not surprised, as it is quite salacious considering what South Korea ca. 1975 was like. (Kim was also responsible for the biggest hit of the 1970s, 1977's Winter Woman [겨울여자]).

We first meet Yeong-ja as she is being dragged in in yet another roundup of prostitutes from one of the seedier neighborhoods of Seoul. In the police station, by chance she encounters Chang-su, her would-be boyfriend of three years ago, who is just back from serving in Vietnam. We quickly embark on a lengthy flashback, tracing Yeong-ja's long strange trip from fresh-faced maid to sweatshop seamstress to bar hostess and finally to bus conductress, where tragedy strikes as it so often does in Korean melodrama. Left with no other choice, pretty but maimed Yeong-ja succumbs to the vortex of prostitution that has been tugging at her sleeve ever since she got fired from her housemaid job (for being wanton; i.e. the no-good son of the manor raped her.) The rest of the film chronicles first Chang-su's and then Yeong-ja's attempts to make a better life for themselves. It's a pretty standard story, although it does produce a somewhat non-standard ending; but for me, the story is not the appeal of the film.

The appeal is chiefly in the performance of Yeom Bok-sun (염복순), who is superb as Yeong-ja. She is asked to play any number of emotional registers, ranging from naif to slut to suicide to determined woman, and most of the time she has to feign a handicap to boot. Despite the intense scenery-chewing going on all around her all the time, she manages to keep all of the manifestations of Yeong-ja's changing personality under control and delivers a nuanced performance. In those two opening scenes, for example, she first appears as a foul-mouthed hooker in the hoosegow, and then (in the flashback) as an angel-faced fawn suddenly out of the woods and in the Big City, and it wasn't until it the second scene was over that I realized that it was the same actress playing both parts. I can't find much online about Yeom, except that it seems that her short career had come to an end by 1979 after making about 10 films in five years.

The film is presented in the OAR of 2.35:1, enhanced for widescreen. The print was in reasonably good condition; some damage shows up, most especially in outdoor shots near the end of the film, when the print is so speckled that you momentarily wonder if Yeong-ja is going to have to endure a plague of crows on top of everything else she's been through. Similarly the mono track will disappoint the audiophiles, as there's an ever-present hiss and some cracks and pops, and seems to sit a little too far forward, but none of this bothered me; in fact, I might not have noticed them were I not planning to write this review. Full disclosure: I don't give two hoots about this sort of stuff.

There is a director's commentary track, which is unsubtitled; all the more reason to learn Korean. Apart from that, there's no other extras.

One film in, and I'm already glad I got this set.

More on this film from KOFA (warning: spoilers).

I Got REALLY Lucky

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/12/thoughts-and-prayers-haiti

A Tapestry of Natural Phenomena

A geology professor up at the university estimates that there is a 78% probability of a 5.0 aftershock within seven days of the main quake (which was Saturday at 4:30pm), and a 5-10% chance of an even larger (than 6.5) temblor in that period. The fact that there were seven quake events of at least 6.2 magnitude in a 10-month period of 1991-92 (see post below) does not fill me with comfort.

We did have some damage here after all. One of the massive water tanks, which holds the water pumped up from the well down by the river, shifted sometime during or after the quake. The now-tilting tank put some pressure on a PVC pipe, which pulled at this joint and that, causing one of the joints to snap. I first noticed problems with the water yesterday, when it was milky and seemed almost carbonated, but didn't think anything of it. This morning, however, the pressure in my shower was noticeably less, and it was spitting and coughing, indicating the presence of air in the pipes. I talked to my landlord about it, and we went to investigate in the pump house, where we saw the break. It's being repaired now, but I've been without water all day.

Water is soon not going to be in short supply, as the sky has gotten apocalyptically dark. There's a big thunderstorm on the radar just offshore (it's probably raining on the quake's epicenter right now), biding its time before coming ashore and beginning the three days of predicted rain.

So after feeling the earth move under my feet, soon we'll have the sky tumbling down (a-tumbling down.) I just hope I don't lose control, down to my very soul, and get hot and cold, all over, all over, all over, all over.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

We had another 4.1 aftershock at about 10:30 last night. I was reading in bed at that time and didn't notice a thing. I have, however, begun to notice, or perhaps imagine, subtle shaking from time to time. It might be little aftershock, or it might just be my blood pressure; who can say?

I hope the worst is over for this event, but a disquieting history lesson was dropped on my doorstep this morning (see left; click to enlarge.) I don't know about you, but by the end of April 1992, I'd have moved the hell outta here.

(The table is published in today's edition of the Times-Standard.)

I Got Lucky

My friends L&D live in Eureka, and I have not been able to reach them by telephone. So today I decided to drive up there to make sure everything was all right. When I got there, it was immediately obvious that they were gone for the weekend (mail in the mailbox, car gone, etc.), so I decided I should check on the cats and make sure there wasn't anything (like a gas leak) that needed immediate attention. Using the spare key, I let myself in and looked around.

First and foremost, I located all three cats, and they were safe and healthy, their normal selves. They had food and clean water and were fine. There were no gas leaks, the power was on, and there seemed to be no immediate danger to anyone.

While there was no significant damage, most every room in the house was a jumble of fallen and broken items. In the dining room (above right; click on the picture to enlarge it), a curio shelf had collapsed, taking numerous china pieces to their doom. The kitchen was a mess of broken glass, and the bathroom had toiletries all over the place. But the TV was upright, and so were all the stereo components, and even the Christmas tree!

I went upstairs, where they have two rooms that are mostly just used for storage. One of them was a mess, but it's always a mess, and we won't go into that. :) The other, however, looked like a very selective miniature tornado had visited it (left.) A big filing cabinet had fallen over and spilled its contents, and a number of books had fallen off bookshelves. However, most of the books were still in their proper places, evidently undisturbed.

All throughout the house, almost every cabinet door, closet door, or room door that could be open was open. To my mind, this seems to defy the randomness of the event. I can see why the shaking would swing closed doors open, but why would at least some of them not then swing shut again?

Anyway, I took some pictures and otherwise left the mess alone. They may want to document the state of the place for insurance purposes, and/or just see what the aftermath of a 6.5 looks like. Furthermore, it wouldn't be up to me to decide what is garbage and what should be kept for possible repair. I decided that the best course of action was to leave a message about the condition, offer my cleanup help when they want it, and otherwise leave things as they were.

Nineteen Hours Later

"Earthquake? What earthquake?"