This
is a Korean movie, so even though it starts out like a Blake Edwards sex farce,
there will be some tragedy eventually. Men are indeed acting badly, but they
are not the only ones in Lee Byeong-hun’s What
a Man Wants (trailer
here),
which screens during the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.
Seok-geun
constantly cheats on his patient and lovely wife Dam-deok, because he is a cad.
Ironically, he often tricks his straight-laced brother-in-law Bong-soo into
covering for him. A lot of people would give him a pass if he had some side
action, because Seok-geun’s sister Mi-young can be a you-know-what-buster. One
fateful night, Bong-soo naively shows up for the pool game that was supposed to
serve as Seok-geun’s alibi and inadvertently steals away the attention of his
new prospective lady friend, Je-ni. Seok-geun had been daring him to have an
affair of his own, so he finally gives into temptation.
Not
long after the affair begins, Bong-soo’s professional standing as a chef-restauranteur
dramatically improves. Alas, tragedy also strikes the family. As a result of
these combined events, Bong-soo and Seok-geun effectively trade places.
However, when Mi-young hires Je-ni as a waitress in the restaurant, things
revert back to a farcical level.
There
is a fair amount of door-slamming in WAMW,
but there is also a good deal of guilt and grief. When it loses a character, the
repercussions are felt all the way through to the end. Still, there is plenty
of physical comedy, mostly executed without excessive mugging.
Most
of that sneaking around and hiding under tables falls to Shin Ha-kyun, who is quite
nimble and rather poker-faced as Bong-soo. Initially. Lee Sung-min plays
Seok-geun as a roguish shaggy dog, almost like a Korean Jim Belushi, but he
gets surprisingly serious during the third act. In fact, it is a rather smoothly
and subtly evolving performance. Yet, the biggest surprise might be Lee El, who
elevates Je-ni beyond a mere sex status, giving her complicated depth and
dimension, very much in the tradition of Dada Chan.
Nobody
gets off easily in WAMW, but Lee and
co-screenwriters Jang Gyu-sung Bae Se-young do not hold grudges against anyone
either. You might have missed the connection, but their screenplay is based on
the 2011 Czech film Men in Hope, yet
they definitely incorporate distinctly Korean attitudes. They also capitalize
on the temperate and inviting Jeju Island locales. A nice balance of funny and
sad, What a Man Wants screens
tomorrow afternoon (7/8) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.
