Responses to a Teaser screening of The Villainess (Ak-Nyeo) (2017)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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11 September
Some first-night responses to a Teaser screening, by London Korean Film Festival (in conjunction with Cambridge Film Festival), of The Villainess (Ak-Nyeo) (2017), screened at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Monday 11 September at 9.00 p.m.
Our schedule is updated to September 21st, including new releases mother! and The Villainess. Info and tickets: https://t.co/z8KAZMjv8Q pic.twitter.com/QOeguZqCq9— Irish Film Institute (@IFI_Dub) September 11, 2017
In The Villainess (2017), who is the title-character ?
Is it Seo-hyeong Kim ?
Is it Seo-hyeong Kim ?
At @CamPicturehouse, in conjunction with @camfilmfest, @koreanfilmfest brings us The Villainess to-night ! https://t.co/YcPN9wbpOC— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 11, 2017
Amidst all the sequences where so much happens so quickly (the whirl that is typically in The Matrix (1999), or of the Kill Bill films (2003, 2004)), the opposite pole of The Villainess - aside from the possible elements of melodrama* of which Mark Morris spoke - is that type of moment when one thing reminds of another (which is there, with Motoko, in Ghost in the Shell (1995)) :
Sook-hee (played by Ok-bin Kim) is no longer in the present, because her instant has become the time to which (drawn by remembrance) she has disassociated - and so she is then visibly not 'present' to someone near her. But this is not mere daydream, but traumatic revisiting of episodes (or eras) of abuse [As in As if I am Not There (2010)].
As Motoko arguably is intuitively seeking – without knowing whom, or what, she seeks (but having the capacity ‘to dive into’ the being of others) – so is Sook-hee. Accordingly, we see her, finding in parts of her memory to which she does not have direct access things that events throw up, but unable to give her complete history (and so the film does not show it, not even 'out of order'). To this extent, The Villainess will not fully explain who Sook-hee is, or why, but just alludes to the tortuousness of her life - as its painful and wounded nature becomes clear to us.
Here's a first response, to a film that asks 'Who are we ?', and asserts (twice ?) that 'Nothing we say here will change anything'... pic.twitter.com/H6hXgw3RPr— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 11, 2017
In literary terms, one is reminded not only of G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (and Conrad's The Secret Agent), but also the weirdness of Iain Banks in The Wasp Factory, A Song of Stone, and - of course - The Business !
Film-references :
* Akira (1988)
* As if I am Not There (2010)
* Ghost in the Shell (1995)
* Jupiter Ascending (2015)
* Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) / Vol. 2 (2004)
* Looper (2012) [Surprise Film at Cambridge Film Festival]
* Salt (2010)
* The Matrix (1999)
These tattered corridors, do they remind us of where Neo seems to have been gunned down for good... ?
London Korean Film Festival 2017: initial programme details announced https://t.co/69qBpI4esY pic.twitter.com/KGdGjwIWAy— London Korean Links (@lklinks) September 11, 2017
End-notes :
* There are certainly romantic tropes, but how much are they undercut by everything else that we know... ? (Even so it is very important for Sook-hee to know whether she was ever loved, whatever happens Now.)
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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