Listening to this quartet of amateur
criminals is sort of like Rashomon,
except instead of four different perspectives, we get eight. It will be up to a
professional fixer-cleaner much like Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction to tidy up their mess and decide where the truth lies
in Hyunyong Park’s short film, The
Luncheon on the Grass, which screens during the 2016 Third Culture Korean American Film Festival New York (in Brooklyn).
The young kidnapping victim is now dead,
but Luncheon is a comedy, so deal
with it. Apparently, he grabbed a knife and killed himself. In fact, that is
the only point where their stories agree. With the arrival of the cleaner (a referral
from a more connected acquaintance), each tries to convince the outsider of
their limited culpability for boy’s death. To “get their stories straight,” the
underworld specialist has them re-enact the crime, with the still fresh corpse.
However, this leads to more bickering and less clarity. Things get so heated,
they almost forget they ordered Chinese. Settling down to eat, they
inadvertently recreate Manet’s Luncheon
on the Grass, a reproduction of which hangs on the wall of the apartment in
question. Then suddenly, their motivation shifts, as do their stories, in
tandem.
Luncheon
has
some wonderfully flawed and damaged characters, including a scandal-tarred university
professor and an aspiring actress coveting Botox sessions. It is a bit
disappointing that they were brought together by their clay-footed priest, but
at least Park buoys us with some razor sharp dialogue and darkly absurdist
humor.