So, now everyone loves everything Korean, let’s have a film festival. The
annual London Korean Film Festival is now in its seventh year and is great as
you get a free man-bag with every viewing. I’ve been to the festival in
previous years – unable to recall what I saw – and again this year went to some
of the one-off screenings at various cinemas around London in what is quite an
extensive bill put on by the Korean Cultural Centre this outing.
Starting off with some K-animation, I saw ‘The King of Pigs’: a film
with the character design of Bevis and Butthead and the animation of
Thunderbirds. At their school, Jong-suk and Kyung-min were subject of a
hierarchical system that keeps them with the lowest of the low, while those up
high keep tormenting them on a daily basis. Around two decades later, the pair
of school friends meet up for the first time in years to discuss their old
classmate Chul who had stood up for the pair all those years ago. Fighting
back, the enraged Chul wants to ensure that those in power will not look back
on their school days with fond memories.
As stated, there is something very Mike Judge about the look and feel
of the characters, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also, the digital
animation tries to create realistic actions in the characters, but instead
leaves them bouncing along like odd puppets on a string. This creates some
laughs to start, but quickly fades into the background as the film progresses.
There is little original in the storyline: films reminiscing over
life-defining moments at school are common place and the characters are quite
typical of bullying drama. But the ‘King od Pigs’, by director is Yeun Sang-ho
is an entertaining enough social commentary about the haves and the have-nots
and the places it leads us. Though do ignore the last line of the film – a meal
should end with cheese, not a piece of art.
Next up and finally is ‘As One, Korea’, the story of the 1991 World
Table Tennis Championship in which North and South Korea set aside their
differences for a game of table tennis. Tired of always losing to those pesky
Chinese, the two nations decide to make a once-in-a-generation decision to
reunite the two countries divided by the 38th Parallel.
Cue an opening half hour of cultural differences with hilarious
consequences, leaving the actresses lumped with playing the roles of our
friends in the North to have less fashionable haircuts, including everybody’s
favourite electrocuted-until-she-pisses-herself actress, Bae Doo-na. Starting
off as a comedy depicting the straight-edge and regimented North having to
stand beside their wilder, Southern cousins, it then turns into a sports film,
complete with musical montages as the two groups of players learn to get along
and start winning some table tennis matches. Then, of course, the politics in
thrown in with the North Korean players scolded for their drinking of alcohol
and reading of jazz pamphlets, before it all gets a little bit too sentimental
towards the end.
How much of all this actually took place, I don’t know. The end result
did actually occur, though (spoiler alert!) France finished with the bronze
medal, not Britain, as the film suggests (this is the LONDON Korean Film
Festival, after all), though the story of how we got there is no doubt
exaggerated in places. Though the unification of nations for sporting reasons
will naturally bring with it dispute – imagine if England, Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland decided to unify for a football team at say, the Olympic
Games. The result would be disastrous.
But politics and reality aside, ‘As One, Korea’ is a good and
entertaining film that – sentimentality aside – doesn’t get bogged down too
much in one focus, and is for all to enjoy, Capitalists and Communists alike…though
probably not the Communists.
Happy with my free bag, other commitments meant I did not get to see
anywhere near as many of the films as I would have liked, though with around
thirty films shown in little over a week, I’d be mad to want to sit in a
darkened room that much.
