Road Movie (Korean: 로드무비) is a 2002 South Korean film about a love triangle between a woman, a man who loves her, and a gay man who loves him. Living on the margins of society, they go on a road trip together.
Jung Chan ... Suk-won
Seo Lin ... Il-joo
Jung Hyung-gi ... Min-seok
Bang Eun-jin ... Jung-in
Kim Gi-cheon ... Jo-si
Even though it is likely to ignite controversy among Korean filmgoers for its explicit depiction of gay sexuality, Road Movie is simply an excellent film, with or without sex scenes: a taut and poignant drama capable of holding its own against its cinematic predecessors such as Wim Wenders' Paris Texas and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. To be sure, in Road Movie, same-sex love between men is not used as a narrative device to enhance melodramatics, as it is in, say, Bungee Jumping of Their Own: the characters approach this issue with refreshing candidness and pragmatism, and the movie braves the uncharted waters of the human heart where the currents of friendship, compassion, love and sexual desire co-mingle and merge into one another.
Road Movie Hwang Jeong-min (Waikiki Brothers) stars as Dae-sik, an erstwhile mountain climber who is now an unofficial den father of a group of homeless people living in the corridors of Seoul Station. He unwittingly saves the life of a ruined stockbroker Seog-won (Jeong Chan), taking the latter under his wing. Initially full of self-hate and upper-middle class snobbishness, Seog-won eventually forms a grudging friendship with Dae-sik and they set out on a road trip toward Dae-sik's hometown. Later, they pick up a pretty but no-nonsense prostitute Il-joo (Seo Lynn), who falls in love with Dae-sik. As their improbable menage a trois spirals into dissolution, we learn more about Dae-sik's life as a gay man forced to hide his feelings in an uncomprehending society.
Director Kim In-sik, who debuts with Road Movie but has worked in the Korean film industry since early 1990s, is in full control of the movie's tone and narrative. The sequence where Dae-sik, frantically rushing the catatonic Seog-won to a hospital in a shopping cart, is attacked by a pair of bikers armed with Molotov cocktails is as intense as anything I have seen in any Korean action film this year. The portrayal of the homeless is stark and resolutely unsentimental, unflinchingly showing us how not only camaraderie but also indifference to other people's misery are sometimes necessary for survival. The filmmakers also rein in the impulse toward weepy histrionics. When Dae-sik meets his estranged family it is all the more heartbreaking because tear-jerking cliches are avoided.
Moreover, this is one Korean movie that truly lives up to its title: it is a genuine road movie. The characters drive, walk, ride and drive some more, and the shifting landscape, mostly the mountains of the Eastern seaboard, is given the status of a character in itself: an eerily white rock quarry that suggests the ruins of an alien civilization: geometrical go-board patches of saltern, inscrutable under the sinking sun: and later, a shack filled with mounds of just-harvested salt, where the two main characters finally reconcile their differences with heartbreaking gestures of intimacy.
For me, the heart of Road Movie is perhaps best expressed in a rather small scene that occurs mid-point. Il-joo challenges Dae-sik, who is about to leave her: instead of slapping, berating or smooth-talking her, or responding with a baleful gaze and 'cool' silence, Dae-sik softly intones, "I am so sorry," and gives her a gentle hug, stroking her hair with his big, callused hands. We suspect that a Korean man is indeed capable of such gentleness and affection toward a woman (or man, for that matter) who is not an object of sexual desire or related by blood: it is just that we seldom encounter such a character amongst the endlessly churned-out gangster 'comedies' and arthouse hits suffering from madonna-and-whore dichotomitis. Sometimes we need an honest and thoughtful film like Road Movie to be reminded of such simple truths.
Cast:
Hwang Jung-min ... Dae-shikJung Chan ... Suk-won
Seo Lin ... Il-joo
Jung Hyung-gi ... Min-seok
Bang Eun-jin ... Jung-in
Kim Gi-cheon ... Jo-si
Even though it is likely to ignite controversy among Korean filmgoers for its explicit depiction of gay sexuality, Road Movie is simply an excellent film, with or without sex scenes: a taut and poignant drama capable of holding its own against its cinematic predecessors such as Wim Wenders' Paris Texas and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. To be sure, in Road Movie, same-sex love between men is not used as a narrative device to enhance melodramatics, as it is in, say, Bungee Jumping of Their Own: the characters approach this issue with refreshing candidness and pragmatism, and the movie braves the uncharted waters of the human heart where the currents of friendship, compassion, love and sexual desire co-mingle and merge into one another.
Road Movie Hwang Jeong-min (Waikiki Brothers) stars as Dae-sik, an erstwhile mountain climber who is now an unofficial den father of a group of homeless people living in the corridors of Seoul Station. He unwittingly saves the life of a ruined stockbroker Seog-won (Jeong Chan), taking the latter under his wing. Initially full of self-hate and upper-middle class snobbishness, Seog-won eventually forms a grudging friendship with Dae-sik and they set out on a road trip toward Dae-sik's hometown. Later, they pick up a pretty but no-nonsense prostitute Il-joo (Seo Lynn), who falls in love with Dae-sik. As their improbable menage a trois spirals into dissolution, we learn more about Dae-sik's life as a gay man forced to hide his feelings in an uncomprehending society.
Director Kim In-sik, who debuts with Road Movie but has worked in the Korean film industry since early 1990s, is in full control of the movie's tone and narrative. The sequence where Dae-sik, frantically rushing the catatonic Seog-won to a hospital in a shopping cart, is attacked by a pair of bikers armed with Molotov cocktails is as intense as anything I have seen in any Korean action film this year. The portrayal of the homeless is stark and resolutely unsentimental, unflinchingly showing us how not only camaraderie but also indifference to other people's misery are sometimes necessary for survival. The filmmakers also rein in the impulse toward weepy histrionics. When Dae-sik meets his estranged family it is all the more heartbreaking because tear-jerking cliches are avoided.
Moreover, this is one Korean movie that truly lives up to its title: it is a genuine road movie. The characters drive, walk, ride and drive some more, and the shifting landscape, mostly the mountains of the Eastern seaboard, is given the status of a character in itself: an eerily white rock quarry that suggests the ruins of an alien civilization: geometrical go-board patches of saltern, inscrutable under the sinking sun: and later, a shack filled with mounds of just-harvested salt, where the two main characters finally reconcile their differences with heartbreaking gestures of intimacy.
For me, the heart of Road Movie is perhaps best expressed in a rather small scene that occurs mid-point. Il-joo challenges Dae-sik, who is about to leave her: instead of slapping, berating or smooth-talking her, or responding with a baleful gaze and 'cool' silence, Dae-sik softly intones, "I am so sorry," and gives her a gentle hug, stroking her hair with his big, callused hands. We suspect that a Korean man is indeed capable of such gentleness and affection toward a woman (or man, for that matter) who is not an object of sexual desire or related by blood: it is just that we seldom encounter such a character amongst the endlessly churned-out gangster 'comedies' and arthouse hits suffering from madonna-and-whore dichotomitis. Sometimes we need an honest and thoughtful film like Road Movie to be reminded of such simple truths.
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