Korea’s ‘film noir’ movies wow Cannes

Hidden dragon: fest eyes elusive Chinese movie market

SEOUL, May 23, (AFP): Beyond the gleaming towers of modern high-tech Seoul, it is the dark past of South Korea’s years of dictatorship, violence and upheaval that have inspired the country’s staggering rise as a cinematic powerhouse.

No fewer than five South Korean movies are showing in the elite selection of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

And Bong Joon-Ho’s Netflix creature feature “Okja” is one of the early favourites for its top prize, the Palme d’Or.

But two of the other Korean films in competition are crime and action thrillers typical of the booming “Korean noir” genre.

Films about bloody crimes, gangsters and corruption, often with a political edge, have swept box offices and film awards, winning praise for gritty stories about the dark underbelly of society.

“The Villainness” portrays a female assassin trained as a killer at a young age by a crime ring.

She seeks a new life by working for the South Korean government with a licence to kill.

“The Merciless” has two former prison buddies trying to climb the ladder of the gangster world, where lying, cheating, backstabbing and violence are norms.

“South Korea has such a turbulent modern history ridden with violence and political, social upheavals... I think that may be why we are good at making thriller movies like this,” said Jung Byung-Gil, director of “The Villainness”.

“With the military dictatorship that ruled for decades and widespread corruption... reality is a fertile ground for so many interesting stories,” he told AFP.

Transformation

The South has gone through a stunning transformation in recent decades, going from from a war-ravaged backwater poorer than Ethiopia after the 1950-53 Korean War to Asia’s fourthlargest economy.

Its political history is an equally hectic roller coaster. Before the democratisation of the 1990s, military rule from the 1960s to the 1980s saw tens of thousands killed or tortured — all against a backdrop of perennial tension with North Korea, now nuclear-armed.

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At the same time its vibrant entertainment industry has taken Asia by storm, with its television dramas, movies, K-pop songs and stars enjoying loyal followings across the region and beyond.

Jung, 36, made his name with a series of action and thriller films, including “Confession of Murder”, loosely based on a series of murders of young women in rural Hwaseong in the 1980s.

The serial killer was never found, and his crimes also inspired Bong’s award-winning 2003 “Memories of Murder”, which highlighted the repressive social atmosphere under the army rule of the time.

“The Villainess” is packed with dramatic fight and killing scenes — Jung studied at a martial arts acting school — involving knives, swords, axes, rifles and handguns.

Despite South Korea’s rising stature in world cinema, its directors have limited resources, forcing them to be “more creative and more spontaneous”, Jung told AFP.

“We don’t have huge investment or world-class technology like Hollywood. So we try to create scenes that feel more real, raw and alive than CGIridden US blockbusters,” he said.

The style first gained global traction with “Oldboy”, an emblematic mystery thriller by Park Chan-Wook — a Cannes judge this year — which won the Cannes Grand Prix in 2004.

The movie, about a man seeking revenge after being imprisoned by a captor for 15 years, won rave reviews for its cut-throat, unrelenting scenes of violence and sombre, bleak cinematography.

Many other moviemakers followed suit with their own bloody thrillers.

Recent examples of the genre include 2015’s critically-acclaimed “Inside Man”, which detailed cosy and corrupt ties between the elites of Seoul’s business, political, media and criminal worlds.

“The King” — a recent swashbuckling political drama about corrupt, power-hungry prosecutors — features shamanistic rituals in which powerful political figures pray for the defeat of a presidential candidate.

After it was shot, the real-life corruption scandal that eventually brought down president Park Geun-Hye emerged, centred on her secret confidante Choi Soon-Sil — the daughter

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Like an advancing army in a historical epic, the world’s film studios are massing on the frontier of China’s movie market, desperate to conquer the other side of the Great Wall.

At the Cannes Film Festival, it’s difficult to find a producer who isn’t interested in a slice of the Chinese box office, set to be the globe’s most valuable by 2019.

With a burgeoning middle class among its 1.3 billion-strong population, China already has the most movie screens — with new ones popping up at a dizzying rate of 27 per day last year, according to analysts IHS Markit.

And while ticket sales have dipped slightly, the potential profits from a smash-hit in China are bigger than ever.

The latest “Fast and Furious” movie has earned even more in China than in the US and the country is in the grip of a craze for the Indian film “Dangal”, about a father who wants his daughters to become professional wrestlers.

“Chinese people have more money in their pocket and they want to pay for entertainment, to see a different life through cinema,” said Lin Jing, producer of the only Chinese film showing in the official selection at Cannes, “Walking Past the Future”.

Tie-ups have come thick and fast at the festival, with Beijing-based Jetsen taking a stake in the thriller “American Made” starring Tom Cruise, and a deal announced to sell the children’s animation franchise “Moomins” for Chinese release.

But there’s a snag: the Communist Party keeps tight limits on foreign films imported for screening in China, with the annual limit currently set at 34.

Rumours have swirled for months that Beijing is planning to expand the quota. But Jerome Paillard, director of the Cannes Film Market — a deal-making shop that runs parallel to the main festival — said Hollywood should wait before cracking open the champagne.

It remains to be seen whether Beijing “really has a strategic will to open up”, Paillard told AFP, adding: “We don’t feel for the moment that commercial relations in cinema have really taken off.”

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