Kim Jong-Kwan Archives - London Korean Film Festival

How To Operate A Polaroid Camera

admin — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 18:24:41 +0000

She holds in her hands a most precious object; not because of what it is, but because of its owner. Her crush is lending her his camera. He tells her how to use it, how it’s not the camera but the film that is expensive, and so she must be sure before she takes a photo. But all she hears and sees is him, out of focus, as she struggles to express how she feels, something a photograph can’t capture.

The post How To Operate A Polaroid Camera appeared first on London Korean Film Festival.

Shades of the Heart

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:00:55 +0000

Separated from his wife in England, author Chang-seok (Yeon Woo-jin) is back in Seoul, working on his next novel, and trying to work (and walk) through his complicated feelings about what he has left behind. He also has encounters (some by arrangement, others by chance) with four people whose names become the formal headings for the film’s first four chapters. As Chang-seok converses with each of them about ageing and memory, love and loss, truth and fiction, ever so gradually the focus shifts to Chang-seok himself.

Kim Jong-kwan’s assured feature concerns the stories we tell ourselves and each other to go on living in a world of sadness, death and oblivion. In this stylish, sophisticated set of slyly interweaving narratives (all told in a whisper), dreams and delusions slip into an otherwise realist frame, with a cumulative impact that is miraculous if also quietly devastating.

The post Shades of the Heart appeared first on London Korean Film Festival.

Josée

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:00:43 +0000

Kim Jong-kwan’s film traces an evolving relationship between young student Young-seok (Nam Joo-Hyuk) and the mysterious Josée (Han Ji-Min), whose meet-cute involves him helping her after she has fallen from her wheelchair. French in origin, ‘Josée’ may well not be the real name of this bookish shut-in, as much as the stories which she tells about herself and her exotic travels seem beguilingly improbable and almost certainly mendacious. Yet Young-seok is fascinated by this strange mythomanic woman and her messy house of curiosities, and keeps coming back for her simple but tasty cooking.

Romance eventually blossoms between them during the harsh mid-winter, but in this melancholic tale of love, loneliness and loss, we are left to wonder just how much of it all might merely be Josée’s fanciful fictionalising. Hers is a peculiar story which, for all its slippery tricksiness, remains deeply affecting.

The post Josée appeared first on London Korean Film Festival.