Loved “Parasite”? Check out these South Korean movies
South Korean cinema has rocketed to international prominence over the past few decades, as have some of its greatest filmmakers, including Bong. If you loved “Parasite” but haven’t seen any of his previous six features, I envy you — you have hours of pleasure awaiting you. And while I’m not partial to his first feature, the satire “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” everything that this sui generis filmmaker has made since is a must-see, from his unsettling monster movie “The Host” to the equally unnerving “Mother,” a tale of monstrous motherhood.
Film festivals can be a terrific way to check out the latest in new South Korean cinema, especially given that not everything hits streaming (in English). If you’re interested in seeing work from women, sometimes your local festival, museum or cultural center might be your best bet, simply because those movies may not be otherwise available. Among the titles from women making the festival rounds is “The House of Us”; in the March issue of “Sight and Sound,” Bong singled out its director, Yoon Ga-eun, as a filmmaker to watch. (Bong also gave a shout out to Kim Ki-young, whose feverish 1960 “The Housemaid” is essential viewing.)
As with any robust national cinema, there is a wide range of work for every taste and temperament, mood and occasion. There are horror freakouts, action adventures, chin-stroking dramas, goofball comedies, tearsoaked melodramas, rarefied art films and downand-dirty exploitation flicks. The veteran auteur Im Kwon-taek has made more than 100 movies and deserves a deep dive. On the other end of the cinespectrum, I recommend Yeon Sang-ho’s “Train to Busan,” a pulse-pounder that focuses on an inattentive businessman and his young daughter who become trapped on a train of fast-moving chomping zombies. It’s a tough, surprisingly emotional ride.
Given the sheer bounty of South Korean cinema, I can only point to a selection of favorite artists, among them the brilliant Lee Chang-dong, who deserves a far larger audience in the United States. He’s best known here for his unsettling, shrewdly classconscious drama “Burning,” which centers on an uneasy triangle — featuring a revelatory turn from American actor Steven Yeun — that ends in catastrophe. Two other essential Lee movies to check out are “Poetry,” about a woman who comes to realize that her grandson has committed a ghastly crime, and “Secret Sunshine,” about a mother who turns — briefly, disastrously — to religion after a personal crisis.
The prolific director Hong Sang-soo is another mainstay on the festival scene, though his movies often secure limited theatrical distribution in the United States. His narratively supple and inventive films chart the coordinates of desire among men and women who share and overshare, often during alcohol-soaked conversations. Few directors do so much with so ostensibly little, but, at Hong’s best, worlds of feeling are revealed in scenes of people facing one another — and themselves — across a table littered with soju bottles. “The Power of Kangwon Province,” “Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,” “Turning Gate,” “Woman on the Beach,” “The Day He Arrives,” “The Day After,” “Hotel by the River” — there’s a lot to choose from, so get watching.
Plus! One of my favorite movies of the past decade is Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden,” a wild, often very funny and touching erotic thriller. Na Hong-jin’s first feature, “The Chaser,” is a pitchblack action movie about a cop-turned-pimp hunting down a serial killer. I prefer “The Yellow Sea,” a blood-soaked tour de force of kinetic action and choreographed mayhem topped with acid politics.