Lurid sex in a bathroom pretty much sums up Lee Sang-woo’s lame erotic thriller, FIRE IN HELL
FIRE IN HELL (FLOWER IN HELL) (JI-OK-HWA) (Lee Sang-woo, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 30, 5:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Lee Sang-woo, the Ogre of Korean Independent Cinema behind such cutting-edge, controversial low-budget films as Mother Is a Whore and Father Is a Dog, is back with the lame, lurid Fire in Hell. After being caught having a sexual tryst in a temple, a Korean monk winds up in a Filipino mansion, where a Christian minister attempts to rehabilitate a small group of violent criminals. The sex-obsessed monk, Ji-wol (Won Tae-hee), is soon in the midst of a torrid affair with Yeon-hwa (Cha Seung-min), the beautiful young woman who runs things at the mansion. Ji-wol says very little, but slowly, as the events that brought him to the Philippines reveal themselves in ever-more-graphic details, violence threatens to overwhelm everyone. Having trained on the sets of Kim Ki-duk’s Time and Breath, Lee certainly gained a knowledge of shock value, but his storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. Fire in Hell is an incomprehensible misogynistic mess, a manipulative piece of trash as the writer, director, editor, actor, and agent provocateur tacks on more and more ridiculous scenes, leading to a whirlwind, tragedy-filled ending that couldn’t come soon enough. Fire in Hell purports to be about basic human desires and faith, but instead it’s an absurd erotic thriller without the thrills, not even worthy of being shown on late-night cable, although it was, remarkably, selected for the Jeonju and Moscow International Film Festivals. Fire in Hell is screening on September 30 at 5:30, concluding MoMA’s third annual “Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today” series, a collaboration with the Korea Society.