The "golden boy and jade girl" in the Korean film industry has killed crazy again
Time Contributor | County Howe
Older youth in a cinema.
On October 4, the 28th Busan International Film Festival opened.
The presence of Chinese filmmakers at this film festival is not weak.
Andy Lau's "Mr. Red Carpet", Xu Anhua's "Poem", Zhu Yilong's "Mistake by the River" (China has been scheduled for October 21) and other heavyweight national films were all screened in Busan.
Of course, as a film festival hosted by South Korea, Korean film still occupies the main position, and the most concerned one is the opening film, the adaptation of the novel "I Hate Korea" directed by Zhang Jianjae.
In addition, Busan will also show 5 Netflix Korean films, including "Poison War 2", one of which has been launched recently.
"Ballet's Revenge"
As one of the most anticipated Korean action crime films this year, after the film was launched, it had an IMDb score of 6.1 and a domestic rating of 6.8, but its freshness on Rotten Tomatoes reached an astonishing 100% (currently the number of ratings is limited).
So, what kind of work is this?
Golden Boy and Jade Girl
"Ballet's Revenge" is directed by Lee Cong-hyun and starring Jeon Jong-seo, and the two are currently in a relationship.
Lee Cong-hyun was born in 1990, his appearance is a typical Korean flower beauty, and he is regarded as a debut as an idol, but his film style is fierce and fierce, which contrasts greatly with his appearance.
Lee Cong-hyun
Quan Zhongrui was born in 1994 and stood out from the Thousand People Audition and starred in Li Cangdong's directorial work "Burning".
She has a natural cinematic face, which moves between literary and genre films.
Jeon Jong-rui in "Burning"
The first film the two worked on was the 2020 time-travel-themed thriller "The Phone".
"Telephone" is Lee Congxian's first feature film, and the complexity of the script, the maturity of filming, and the accuracy of the performance are all in the first echelon level in Korean films in recent years.
Li Congxian was nominated for Qinglong and Baeksang Best New Director, and Quan Zhongrui directly won the Baeksang Film Queen.
Jeon Jong-rui in "The Telephone"
Based on this deeply bound couple's relationship, Lee Cong-hyun and Jeon Jong-seo are regarded as "Hong Sang-so and Kim Min-hee in the field of Korean genre films" (from an ethical and moral point of view, the two pairs are still quite different).
In addition to Jeon Jong-seo, "Ballet's Revenge" also gathers familiar faces such as Kim Ji-hoon ("The Beautiful Man Next Door"), Park Youlin ("Drive My Car"), Kim Moo-yeol ("The Legend of the Wicked"), and several of them have participated in the Korean version of "House of Bills".
Korean version of "House of Banknotes"
Like "The Telephone", "Ballet's Revenge" was written by Lee Cong-hyun himself, and the film was inspired by the South Korean "Room N case".
Netflix documentary "Online Purgatory: Revealing Room N"
It is worth noting that next year a movie called "Ballet Killer" will be released in the United States, which has the same title as "Ballerina Revenge", both "Ballerina" (literally translated as "ballerina").
The two films are both different and related.
"Ballet Killer" is written by "Die Hard 4" director Len Wiseman and starring Ana de Armas, which belongs to the spin-off film of the "Fast Pursuit" series (the series of spin-off series "Continental Hotel" has recently ended with a high score).
"Ballet Killer"
Both films are revenge-themed, and "Ballet Revenge" has the psychedelic, elegant style of the "Fast Pursuit" series.
But in "Ballet Killer", Anna's Rooney is a ballet dancer herself, and Yuzhu, played by Jeon Zhongrui in "Ballet Revenge", is not a dancer.
This is one of the biggest differences between the two plays.
In "Ballet Revenge", the ballet dancer is Yuzhu's best friend Minhee, and Minhee's death makes Yuzhu open the road of revenge with great female power.
Love is deep
Yuzhu is a former company bodyguard who feels that life is boring, and meets his former classmate Minxi when buying a birthday cake for himself, and the two meet each other and become increasingly close.
Min-hee is an amateur ballet dancer who was hunted by gangsters when she decided to go abroad for further study, and was forced to shoot glamorous videos, and has since become a gangster plaything.
Before she died, she left behind a pair of dancing shoes and a note.
The note reads: Please help me get revenge!
Based on the clues of the sushi restaurant left by Minhee, Yuzhu follows the vine and locks the target of revenge on a person named "Chef Choi".
Thus, a chase and hunt drama began.
Foreign media La Estatuilla commented that although the story of the film is simple, its atmosphere, audiovisual and protagonist are very special;
Film critic Rohan Naahar (India) also praised the atmosphere of "Revenge of the Ballet", saying that the neon-aesthetic visuals and heavy soundtrack enhance the quality of this Netflix thriller.
This 93-minute movie, on the surface, only has audiovisual charm, but in fact, there are a lot of love worth touching hidden in the film.
The first is between Yuzhu and Minhee.
Time in the film is divided into "now" and "memory", and the two types of time are unified in colorful and gloomy neon images.
Compared to "now", Yuzhu and Minhee's "memory" moments are closer to the gentle filter of Asian pure love movies.
For example, the two look at each other through the glass of the cake display case, reminiscent of works by Shunji Iwai such as "Flowers and Alice" and "Swallowtail Butterfly";
The two ran in memories, and the camera first captured the doubled and jumping shadows on the ground, which not only presented the director's strong sense of creation, but also superimposed the image of Shuangshu in works such as "July and Ansheng".
Yuzhu and Minxi are not only the relationship between the girl helps the girl, but also the fusion of two lonely souls into a self-consistent spark, so Minhee's death will make Yuzhu decide to go to righteousness.
Then between Lee Cong-hyun and Jeon Jong-seo.
In "Telephone", Lee Cong-hyun portrays the pathological portrayal of social disqualification more thoroughly than "Burning" to evoke the actor power in the depths of Jeon Jong-rui's soul.
When it comes to "Ballet Revenge", Lee Cong-hyun is completely addicted to Jeon Jong-seo's appearance charm.
In addition to the wet styling of hair covering his face, and the close-up of his facial features (especially his eyes) that are stunned by the camera, Lee Congxian's strongest love lies in the light in Jeon Jong-rui's hair.
Whether she pushed the door or leaned down to look under the bed, the environment was light or dark, and Quan Zhongrui's hair had a unique light.
It seems that Lee Cong-hyun can be seen chasing her figure on the set, and then tell the staff: Here! Over here! Let there be light!
In the presentation of action scenes, Li Congxian also spared no effort to shape Quan Zhongrui.
Whether it is the forced space fight scene of "canned pineapples attacking and defending, slaying the whole scene" in the opening convenience store, or the 1v1 cold weapon fight with soaring scale and outstanding pain in love hotels, Quan Zhongrui's charm is undoubtedly revealed in one move.
Han Ying is over?
Obviously, the overall performance of "Ballet's Revenge" is close to normal.
In the first work "Telephone", Lee Cong-hyun once wrote an unprecedented thriller climactic scene in which "two chases across two eras occur in the same room at the same time", and in this new work, there is no plot worth reviewing.
But the film still implicitly reveals cultural or artistic pursuits.
For example, the gang boss talks about rules and mentions Kim Doohan and Al Capone.
The former is a Korean gangster celebrity comparable to Do Yuesheng, and the latter is one of the most influential mafia leaders.
Last year's high-scoring crime film "The Suit" (the director's first work of the screenwriter of "The Imitation Game"), the title and story are derived from Al Capone's gangster group Outfit since 1925.
"The Set" & Al Capone
Kim Ji-hoon's "Chef Choi" is cut through the left side of his face by a jade pearl, and his tilted back when walking on the dark night street is a "noise" to the clown's "smiley face" and the obsessive crime style of the "Joker" movie.
"Ballet's Revenge" & "Batman: The Dark Knight"
It can be seen from here that "Ballet's Revenge", as one of Netflix Korean movies, is inevitably merged into the post-2020s trend of "Korean film gradually Americanization" (can be 2019 "Parasite" as the iconic demarcation).
Even the blockbuster Korean film genius Lee Cong-hyun began to directly imitate the production methods of American film and television after the first work.
For example, when Yuzhu buys weapons, the scene is selected in the yellow dead grass, and then a horizon style is framed with a large scene, which is the "royal technique" of "Breaking Bad".
"Ballet's Revenge" & "Breaking Bad"
In the fight soundtrack of Poppy Room, the electronic sound of the substrate is similar to the main soundtrack of "Stranger Things".
Of course, in some dialogue, sets and other elements, you can also see the shadows of famous Korean directors such as Luo Hongxuan (mentioning "Yanbian people", that is, killers, see "Yellow Sea"), Park Chan-wook (retro wall decoration of love hotels).
As the creator of "an era of blurring the borders between the United States and South Korea", Lee Cong-hyun may have more to resist than he needs to accept.
And for the old topic of "whether Korean movies are in decline", in fact, you don't need to look at the local box office changes, just look at the films selected by South Korea to send Oscars in recent years——
2020 "Ministers of Namshan", 2021 "Mogadishu", 2022 "Determination to Break Up", 2023 "Concrete Utopia".
The quality from 2020 to 2022 is actually good, but it is still quite different from the overall style of the Oscar for Best International Film, and this year's selection is almost at the level of bad and interchangeable.
The world of "earthquake single-family apartment" built by "Concrete Utopia" is very extreme, and Han Ying, which has always excavated the ultimate humanity, is very gentle in all aspects this time.
The degree of direct pounding of society and soul is far less than that of previous Korean-style disaster films such as "Flu" and "Pandora".
"Concrete Utopia"
Personally, director Yan Tae-hwa was the assistant director of famous directors such as Park Chan-wook and Park Hoon-jung ("New World"), and like almost all the assistant directors who were promoted, he also revealed a helplessness of limited talent and mediocre expression.
Collectively, Korean films in 2023, whether art films or genre films, still do not have a single iconic work as of October, which is really shameful.
Is Han Ying finished?
Suffice it to say that it may be time for Korean directors to make some rebellion against reality (albeit hard).