Just
imagine if Peter, Paul and Mary started out as a quartet with a dude named
Billy Bob singing baritone. That never happened and the Korean folk duo Twin
Folio were never part of a trio, but a new behind-the-music drama will suppose
they were for the sake of “what if?” Considering most of Twin Folio’s greatest
hits were sad love songs, it only stands to reason love played a role in
breaking apart their fictional precursor trio in Kim Hyun-suk’s C’est Si Bon (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
In
the 1960s, South Korea lagged a bit behind the American Folk Revival, but they
tried to make up for lost time in the trendy Mugyo-dong neighborhood. The C’est
Si Bon club was like the early Village Vanguard, except it was all folk, no
jazz. During the regular amateur nights, Yoon Hyeon-ju and Song Chang-shik regularly
battle each other for victory, developing solid fan-bases and a pitched
rivalry. Impresario Kim Choon-sik wants to combine their talents to launch his
folk label, but wants an easier going third member to act as a buffer between
them. His prospective producer-songwriter Lee Jang-hee just happens to cross
paths with Oh Geun-tae, a naïve scholarship student from the sticks, with a perfectly
complimentary baritone for the envisioned C’est Si Bon Trio.
Initially,
Yoon and Song vibe Oh pretty hard, but their voices just fit together. Although
they accept him professionally, they all compete for the attention of Min
Ja-young, the queen of the C’est Si Bon social scene, who is struggling to make
it as an actress. Surprisingly, Oh seems to have the inside track to Min’s
heart, but if you think they will ride off into the sunset together, you haven’t
heard a lot of folk songs or seen a lot of tragically romantic Korean box
office hits.
It
seems strange to make a film about the creation of Twin Folio in which the duo
plays such a tangential role, while still forthrightly addressing the marijuana
scandal that put their careers on ice for years. Regardless, Kim includes
plenty of music for their fans, inventing new backstories for their most
popular tunes. It will surely be much more meaningful to the faithful, but
those not deeply steeped in the Korean folk scene will still be able to pick up
on the film’s shout-outs and call-backs.
The
musical numbers are organically integrated into the narrative and the candy-colored
1960s-1970s period details look great. It also should be admitted Oh’s early
bashful courtship of Min is appealingly sweet. Unfortunately, an extended third
act denouement set forty-some years later rather unsubtly drives the film’s
points into the ground. Nevertheless, Jang Hyun-sung almost single-handedly
saves the contemporary flashforward as the older, but wiser and hipper Lee.
