People
think it’s so great to get back to nature, but it can be dangerous. Just ask the luckless fisherman of Park
Chan-wook’s groundbreaking short film.
Shot by the Oldboy auteur with
his brother Park Chan-kyun entirely on an iPhone4, Night Fishing briefly made the world giddy about the possibility of
cell phone cinema, before subsequent experiments brought everyone back down to
earth. A notably strange short of considerable
length, the Brothers Park’s sinister tale of angling headlines the Korean Short Film Madness programming
block, which screens this coming Tuesday as part of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.
Hard
to classify, Night Fishing (trailer here) begins with a
trippy musical interlude from the UhUhBoo Project, blending alt rock with
traditional imagery. Eventually settling
into the story, a man sets up a camp for a spot of fishing. According to the radio, there is a storm
brewing. There certainly is, but it turns
out to be of a more metaphysical variety.
The man’s night starts to go bad when he pulls in a woman’s dead body that
further alarms him when it suddenly reanimates.
Then things start getting really weird.
Considering
it was shot with a consumer handhold device, the Parks achieve an impressive
array of visual effects. Stylistically,
it is quite distinctive and the cast is definitely professional grade,
including Park alumnus Oh Kwang-rok as the unhappy man, but it turns out to be
a bit of a downer. Imagine, a dark film
from Park.
Though
nowhere near as desperate as Night
Fishing, it is still not easy being a kid in Choi Shin-choon’s The Lucky Gumboy. The sad sack protagonist is definitely on the
bottom of his school’s social ladder.
While he does not suffer bullying of a King of Pigs magnitude, he must buy Pikachu stickers for the stronger,
more popular kids. When a boy acting
slightly off transfers into his class, he accepts responsibility for showing the
newby the ropes. The kid does not talk
much, but he is a wizard with gum, blowing fantastically large bubbles. Ironically, the drooling kid achieves recognition
from their peers the awkward protagonist so craves, but he hardly seems to
notice. While it does not say much for
the sensitivity of Korea’s teachers, Gumboy
has a good heart and Choi displays a nice touch with the elements of
magical realism.
At
seven minutes, Moon Byoung-gon’s Operis
Finis is definitely more of an ironic mood piece than a full fledged
story. An elderly man appears to be
engaged in some rather macabre home renovations. Actually, it is not headed where you think it
is, but you might wish it were, even though it concludes on an unusually upbeat
note for the Madness block. By the way, this would be an appropriate point
to note the overall program is not entirely suitable for children (but teens
and pre-teens might appreciate Gumboy on
its own).
