TIME kicks off a trio of films by Korean director Kim Ki-duk at Japan Society
TIME (SHI GAN) (Kim Ki-duk, 2006)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 10, $12, 3:00
Series runs through March 18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.timethemovie.net
The excellent Japan Society series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which consists of Japanese and Korean films dealing with erotic obsession, continues on March 10 with three works by Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk, beginning at 3:00 with Time. After two years together, See-hee (Seong Hyeon-ah) thinks that her boyfriend, Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo), has lost interest in her. She goes crazy jealous whenever he even so much as takes a peek at another woman, embarrassing him in public time and time again. But when she suddenly disappears, he soon realizes that he can’t live without her. And he won’t necessarily have to; See-hee has taken off to have a plastic surgeon (Kim Sung-min) completely change her face so she can make Ji-woo fall in love with her (now played by Park Ji-yun) all over again, even if he doesn’t know who she really is. But it is a lot harder to change one’s inner psyche than outward physical appearance. Kim, who has made such unusual and compelling films as 3-Iron, The Bow, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring, has crafted yet another fascinating drama that challenges the audience with its unique and unexpected twists and turns, asking intriguing questions rather than doling out simplistic answers. Kim shows the passage of time as a natural enemy to love and romance — but one that can be overcome. “Time travels in divers paces with divers persons,” Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It. And so it does in this difficult yet memorable film.
Kim Ki-duk’s BAD GUY is just plain bad
BAD GUY (NABBEUN NAMJA) (Kim Ki-duk, 2001)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 10, $12, 5:00
Series runs through March 18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.badguythemovie.net
Kim Ki-duk has made a number of excellent films, but Bad Guy is not one of them. Instead, it’s a preposterous, painfully puerile, and deeply misogynistic movie that is insulting from start to finish. Although it’s only a hundred minutes long, it feels like a thousand. Won Seo stars as Sun-hwa, a college girl who gets conned by Han-ki (Cho Je-hyun) into becoming a prostitute to pay off a false debt. He watches her transformation through a two-way mirror while one of his henchmen, Myung-soo (Choi Duk-moon), thinks he has fallen in love with her himself. Lots of sex and violence ensue, most of which makes no sense and is as unbelievable as the premise. The evening concludes at 7:30 with Kim’s 2008 Dream, a tale in which two people’s dreams intersect.
One of Hollywood’s first forays into the Japanese underworld has quite a pedigree — directed by Sydney Pollack (coming off his success with The Way We Were) and written by Robert Towne (who had just scribed Chinatown and Shampoo) and Paul Schrader (his first writing credit, to be followed by Taxi Driver). The great Robert Mitchum stars as Harry Kilmer, a WWII vet who returns to Japan thirty years later to help his friend George Tanner (Brian Family Affair Keith), whose daughter has been kidnapped. Kilmer thinks he can just walk in and walk out, but things quickly get complicated, and he ends up having to take care of some unfinished business involving the great Keiko Kishi (The Twilight Samurai). Kilmer and his trigger-happy young cohort, Dusty (Richard Logan’s Run Jordan), hole up at Oliver’s (Herb “Murray the Cop” Edelman), where they are joined by Tanaka (Ken Takakura) in their battle against Toshiro Tono (Eiji Hiroshima Mon Amour Okada) and Goro (James Flower Drum Song Shigeta) while searching for a man with a spider tattoo on his head. There are lots of shootouts and sword fights, discussions of honor and betrayal, and, in the grand Yakuza tradition, the ritual cutting off of the pinkie. The Yakuza kicks off the Globus Film Series “Hardest Men in Town: Yakuza Chronicles of Sin, Sex & Violence” on March 9 and will be followed by a Q&A with Schrader.
Adapted from a short story by Junichirô Tanizaki, IREZUMI, the opening-night selection of the Japan Society’s “Mad, Bad . . . & Dangerous to Know” series, was one of the first Japanese exploitation films shot in color. Ayako Wakao stars as Otsuya, a pawnbroker’s daughter who aches to get away from her boring life. She convinces her father’s apprentice, the meek Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa), to steal the shop’s money and run away with her, but the plan goes awry when she is sold into sexual slavery to Tokubei (Asao Uchida). Enraptured by her skin, Seikichi (Gaku Yamamoto) marks her for Tokubei by tattooing a huge spider across her back, promising it will bring her special power over men. Soon Otsuya is exacting bloody revenge with the help of the poor, misguided Shinsuke. Directed by Yasuzo Masumura, who also worked with Wakao on such films as MANJI and RED ANGEL (which screens April 1), IREZUMI is a dark, compelling tale that is not afraid to break out of genre conventions. The screening will be followed by the Dressed to Kill! party, where attendees are encouraged to come in costume as their favorite cinematic femme fatale.