Kim Ji-woon Double Bill

 

Two movies from one of South Korea’s most versatile filmmakers: A Bittersweet Life is an ultra-stylish, fatalistic gangster thriller with all the MTV inflected exuberance and considered sincere philosophising of the best Asian genre cinema, though its ideas are eventually drowned in blood: gallons of it. The better film is the excellent psycho-horror A Tale of Two Sisters. Inspired by a Korean folk tale, its substantial eastern motifs and cultural references were lost in Hollywood remake The Uninvited (ain’t that so often the case?). The story of a phantom, a wicked stepmother and two girls on the verge of womanhood, it has much in common with western horror traditions, and is as emotionally engaging as it is frightening. Kim has since directed the most expensive Korean film in history (“kimchee western” The Good, the Bad, the Weird), but while his talent is unquestionable, it remains to be seen if he can reach the auteur heights of Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook.