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发表于 2005-2-27 03:44
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Collect English Reviews
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There is no accounting for tastes/ p8 v) z& K) F& m
By Jay Chung (smilejay@hotmail.com)& r" T# D: w2 M: ?% u
( `7 ?3 \ p' _; VTitle: The virgin stripped bare by her bachelors9 S, j' D5 f+ v' {8 j
Original title: Oh! Soo-jong) T- J8 n9 ~6 _% { A
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Do men and women think equally in terms of sexual politics? According to talented director, Hong, Sang-Soo¨s movie, The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, ＾No, but・￣
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This black and white film is divided into five parts. Each part features split points of view that prove how the battle of the sexes goes beyond politics and into the abstract, and explores the numerous ways in which they crash. The first and third tracking the love affairs of Jae-Hoon (Jong, Bo-Seok) who is a rich, young socialite and the second and fourth sections as seen by Soo-Jong (Lee, Eun-Joo) who is a scriptwriter. The last brings the two narratives together. 6 E7 d+ B8 _& P) k
& y, Y+ z2 x) Y; r) p; GJae-Hoon arrives at his hotel room and awaits a phone call from Soo-Jong. When she calls, she hesitates but he persuades her to come. The story moves back to when he and she first met in front of his art gallery. She is an assistant to producer Young-Soo, who studied with Jae-Hoon at art school. Young-Soo takes Soo-Jong to Jae-Hoon¨s gallery and the three have lunch together. A couple of days pass. Jae-Hoon runs into Soo-Jong at Kyungbok Palace, across the street from his gallery. She had somehow found a pair of gloves that he had left on a bench in the Palace park. That evening, all three get drunk after Jae-Hoon¨s decision to financial support Young-Soo. After Young-Soo leaves, Jae-Hoon tries to steal a kiss from Soo-Jong but she resists. He tries to convince her to start a serious relationship but she refuse.
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2 V4 z5 Y. T2 s% U7 y! @In Jae Hoon¨s point of view, it¨s clear he idealizes Soo-Jong to satisfy his romantic taste, and then wolfishly pursues gratification. In Soo-Jong¨s, she¨s a not-so-naive girl who upgrades lovers to a romantic, gentle savior, a prince charming. Each character¨s memory of his or her first meeting is the proof of this. When they kiss at first, she remembers that she cried feeling something empty, but Jae-Hoon remembers that she feels as if his kiss technique was good. And when they meet in front of an art gallery, Jae-Hoon remembers his beauty and aloofness. She, however, remembers his personal chauffeur who even Jae-Hoon never remembers.
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f6 B( q3 H4 J3 B/ KThe director tries to deconstruct the idea of ｀fact,¨ which could be flexible in terms of people¨s point of view. With his non-definite narrative form, he argues not that people are incapable of remembering facts that they believe accurately, but that there¨s no such thing as fixed truth to remember. Fact is what one sees and decides to store in one¨s memory.
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; Z" j6 g3 ]+ p* a) QHong has a reputation for well-intentioned pokes in plain stories about ordinary people, his choice of black and white film supports that reputation. This film seems to be soft compared with his other films. His debut film, The Day the Pig Fell Into a Well (1996) and The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) have been raved about as the creepiest, eeriest, roughest but best films.
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This plain, colorless, soft, humorous work, however, is likely to keep him at the top of his field. However, as for the English title, The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, which has a similar title as an oil painting by French artist Marcel Dunchamp, sounds less interesting than the original Korean title, ｀Oh! Su-Jong.¨ In the fifth episode where Su-Jong and Jae-Hoon narrate together, the audience might understand why original the Korean title is more interesting than the English title. 3 U5 s K3 u+ r9 \
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This movie got awards for the Special Jury Prize and also a Special Mention at the 13th Tokyo International Film Festival.: Y# ~) H9 a, T- K9 U8 v) w1 n$ H
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+ L) H9 X/ H% g; P2 CThe Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors
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Hong Sang-soo has built himself a stong following abroad with his sober art films The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well and The Power of Kangwon Province. His latest release, titled The Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, will only add to his reputation as being the strongest and most cerebral of contemporary Korean filmmakers.
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5 R/ B7 ~ Y/ n' ]: e7 g% O& U m Virgin appears at first sight to be the simplest of his three works. Soojung (24), a writer and assistant at a small video company, is pursued in turn by her boss, Young Soo (37), and his former classmate, the wealthy Jae Hoon (35). Jae Hoon pressures her to have sex with him, but she continues to put him off, as his pleading grows ever more insistent. Despite this simple storyline, however, the film's plot evolves into much more of a tangle, with the conflicting memories of Soojung and Jae Hoon leaving the viewer with little sure ground to stand on. The film stars Lee Eun-ju, Moon Sung-keun, and Jung Bo-seok, who all excel in capturing the isolation felt by their characters.: t" O9 [( H: D u- I
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For the first time, Hong has chosen to shoot a film in black and white. In the film's press kit, he explains why: "Color gives viewers more information than they need. A screen simplified in black and white, on the other hand, lets the audience concentrate on the characters and discern emotional changes without being disturbed by peripheral objects and environment." Indeed, Virgin feels much different from his earlier works, despite the similarities in theme and characterization. The film contains some beautiful images, which seem to take on an archival quality in black and white.* ?+ l7 _" z6 V# x/ ^9 g
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As in his previous works, Hong has picked a curious title for this film. The Korean title, Oh! Soojung, works both as a pun on a common Korean name and as a sexually-tinged reference ('Soojung' means 'fertilization' in Korean). The English title, in turn, is taken from a 1930's-era artwork by Marcel Duchamp titled "The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even." A green box containing one color plate and 93 reproductions of notes, photographs, and drawings of an unfinished painting, Duchamp's ardor for replication provides an interesting counterpoint to the multiple layers of Hong's film. (Click here for a detailed description of Duchamp's work)5 S3 c8 z9 a' h$ N2 c8 ^) J
! n3 ?, d. A- l9 R# U. LI don't wish to give too much of this film away; it's more interesting when you discover it for yourself. It will likely travel the globe on the international film circuit, having already screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, and Hong's fans would be well-advised not to miss it. (Darcy Paquet)+ T) ?7 q. k4 K3 t1 t, g- j3 G
$ _& V8 l: ]' R* ^$ n1 ~http://koreanfilm.org/kfilm00.html#soojung
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8 x- H$ { H) i" d5 }- S% POh! Soo-jung, 20003 @4 P2 P& Z* t( a
[Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors] ' @8 `4 ^3 w$ o6 M. h5 f" c0 T
A dashing and affluent man named Jae-hoon (Jeong Bo-seok) arrives alone at a hotel resort and begins to occupy his time lazing about (and cursorily inspecting the ventilation system of) the empty, comfortable suite until the anxious distraction of a telephone call from his mobile phone - auspiciously ringing the tune of a tin-pot, synthesized rendition of Ravel's Bolero - reveals that he has arranged for a daytime rendezvous with a young screenwriter, Soo-jung (Lee Eun-joo). Claiming to be running late - and undoubtedly having second thoughts on the consummation of their nascent affair - Soo-jung attempts to postpone their unavoidable sexual encounter for another day against the unyielding and exasperated entreaties of a persistent Jae-hoon. Proceeding through episodic (and numerically demarcated) chapters, the film then follows an apparently linear narrative trajectory as it traces the evolution of the couple's relationship from one fateful day when Jae-hoon's friend, an independent filmmaker named Young-soo (Moon Seong-keun) attends an art exhibition (at the appropriately named Growrich Gallery) with Soo-jung, ostensibly for inspiration for their ongoing project, and the two demure and introverted colleagues find themselves politely acquiescing to have lunch with the personable and confident Jae-hoon (perhaps to broach the subject of financial backing for the film). However, despite the seemingly inexorable progression of the story towards the moment of the unrealized union - a preempted relational milestone irreverently symbolized by the image a stalled aerial passenger tram - the film then oddly reverts to episodes from the preceding chapters, as experienced from an alternate point-of-view (presumably, Soo-jung's) that, in the process, tempers (if not negates) the perceived reality of their anticlimactic coupling.
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Recalling the boldly elliptical, modernist structure of early Alain Resnais, but deeply rooted in the muted aesthetics and indigenous culture of Korean society, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors is an audacious and drolly incisive, yet elegantly (and understatedly) composed human comedy on memory, perspective, and intimacy. Like the idiosyncratic and ingeniously referential English title - derived from Marcel Duchamp's enigmatic two-glass panel, mixed material modern art piece, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (a.k.a. The Large Glass) - the film reflects the artist's abstract and relativistic exposition on the amorphous and dynamic (and consequently, ephemeral) nature of romantic relationships between men and women. (In the Duchamp masterpiece, a figurative assembly of suitors on the lower panel are materially placed apart from the bride situated alone on the upper panel.) Hong Sang-soo similarly incorporates a mixed media approach - interweaving traditional and modern elements of film and novel - to create emotional dimension and character texturality in the narrative absence of objective reality and absolute perspective: permutations of chapters that reveal contradicting ancillary details and high contrast black and white compositions that underscore Soo-jung and Jae-hoon's alternate points of view and more importantly, the implicit irony of situation in the perceived development of their relationship. In presenting a dispassionate and irreconcilable chronicle of the search for intimacy and companionship, Hong creates a bittersweet and fractured tale of love, romance, and human desire.
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http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/hong.html& R6 f1 T+ w# v7 s7 ]4 s5 j
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distant episodes, 28 March 2003
, @2 j8 d9 ?( f; FAuthor: K. S. Kincaid from Vietnam
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7 y( a$ G& @) l, O; r& }, `A VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS
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& b- W) e$ ]/ H7 E) l7 T. _2 ]- _4 rOne of the more colorful movie titles in history belongs to a film that was shot in black and white. However, the English title is a great deal more lurid than the original Korean title (Oh! Soo-Jung!), and is more suggestive of a 1960s Suzuki Seijun sex potboiler than a deliberately paced b/w art film. "Virgin"IS ostensibly about the deflowering of a film director's young assistant, but in fact it's much more content to linger upon and play around with the little details that precede the big event. Soo-Jung are the down-and-out indie film director who she works for and the director's independently wealthy and seemingly none-too-bright drinking buddy. The central conceit of the film is that the same story (the wooing of Soo-Jung) is told twice (Hong likes to divide his films into interrelated halves), from different perspectives. Although whose perspective each segment is taken from is a little unclear (I assume that Part One is the rich guy's view and Part Two is Soo-Jung's, but that seems to create a couple of problems). The changes range from the minor to the quite grand (Soo-Jung is pawed on in a back alley by a different suitor in each half). What it all adds up to is a kind of cosmic game of chance. Two different sets of events build inexorably to the same result. Unlike Hong¡'s other two recent films (I haven't seen The Day a Pig Fell in a Well), the events of the first half of the film don't in any way dictate what happens in the second. But in Virgin it is unclear what is truth and what is fiction, and I'm not sure that any of the characters in the film can be trusted as far as they can be thrown. But what is real and what is imagined is not of primary importance. What is important is that the scheme allows for Hong to dwell on his favorite themes: chance disconnection, male/female relationships and what he seems to feel is the spiritual vacuity of modern Korea. Seems this vacuum doesn't just exist in Korea. Hong shares many of the same sympathies and stylistic traits with Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang and the Finn Aki Kaurismaki, i.e. a free-floating style that lacks what can be called a conventional plot, a dislike of excess cutting, muted acting, a predilection for silence and sparing use of soundtrack music, a subtle, dark sense of humor, and a rather bleak view of modern existence. Not to say that these filmmakers are the same, because each is certainly distinctive in his own way, but all three seem to fixate on a problem that is not endemic only to their particular locales (as firmly rooted in those locales as they all may be). Hong's films are neither entertaining nor reassuring, but for those who prefer substance to fireworks and cliche in their cinema, his works continue to reveal why he is among the best directors working today. It's a shame he't better known, either here in Korea or abroad.
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Seeing double, 19 May 2003
& [: x( ]/ H" M& eAuthor: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England
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Well, here's a Korean movie that even lovers of Godard (and Bergman, to a lesser extent) might love. Shot in radiant black-and-white (gorgeous), this film tells the story of a young woman Soo-jung (LEE Eun-Joo), "courted" by one acquaintance (and also pursued by her boss) in two equal parts -- first from the perspective (mostly) of the young woman's would-be lover, and then (from the top) from the woman's point of view (but again, mainly only mostly). Sometimes the matching scenes are almost identical, other times they are radically different. Most interesting, however, are the matches when only relatively small details are slightly differently remembered (?). This could be sterile and abstract (and some critics have complained), but I found it quite accessible and enjoyable. Our heroine's sensibilities seem a bit more robust (despite her virginal state) than those of either of her men -- and the "second time around" of the story often seems a bit more humorous. Due to my imperfect memory, several viewing will be required until I can pull all the pierces of this film together. Nonetheless, I'd say this is very much worth watching.
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Two sides of a love story, 25 April 2001
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( s, d- T3 @# @Author: Callisto from Singapore
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According to the synopsis in the film festival booklet, the movie plays like a Rashomon of a love triangle. Well... kind of.9 X4 _6 U1 {5 `7 E6 M
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Despite its provocative title, Virgin is essentially a romance, with a deflowering at the end of it. But it is told from the different points of view of the two lovers. The black and white film starts off with the man, Jaewoon, begging his girlfriend to meet him.* ~, T% h) }' _9 o# v4 s
& N4 \; P7 H$ E9 j9 d7 y7 gWe then go through 7 days/stages of the courtship from his point of view, and then the same 7 days/stages as how Soojung saw it. I saw the POVs as memories of what the two protagonists had of their courtship.
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2 W$ `! ~; ~0 _3 q. zThe differences are subtle but I felt they were very real. People tend to have different perception of the same event, or they may remember different salient points, or even mix up memories.
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$ s* \9 L' V$ V5 b+ @6 W- TFor example, in one kissing scene, Jaewoon remembers sweeping a fork off the table while Soojung thought it was a spoon. The events and dialogue also get mixed up as memories get hazy. For instance, a particular dialogue about drinking took place in two places in the different versions.
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% ^7 U' Z7 S8 w/ II really enjoyed the movie even though I do not like the romance genre in general. It was something I could relate to. Especially in courtships, both parties usually have slightly differing views of how it REALLY happened.
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k8 b( P( G* v8 P r0 E6 XWas the above comment useful to you? 7 m: L Q6 d+ C9 F2 ^
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0 c3 C7 t2 A7 y# D# B; q v: h2 mThis movie watches almost like a diary, 12 June 2001+ G4 M: a2 j8 [0 n
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Author: airen from Seattle, USA( I4 m7 o7 Q1 U2 N* j1 i$ n
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5 l8 z. m. [+ K2 wI really enjoy movies shot in black & white, because they don't divert the viewer's attention too much from what actually is going on. I felt the movie was rather slow, but nonetheless makes some interesting social commentaries on dating in Korea. Whether they are true or not... beats me. Someone said that they felt the movie shows 7 days of courtship from two points of view. I almost felt like this was the "Sliding Doors"-like alternative time lines, but I suppose either one would work. Either way, not a bad movie.; X5 p; C( X5 e- ~5 u+ Z
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发表于 2005-2-27 02:55
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