The Isle (Seom)

Scott recommended this excellent Korean movie, with the proviso that his wife Betty had given up after the first, almost unexpected outbreak of acute gruesomness. (Suffice to say there are significant opportunities for laying a pun on the word hooker.)

We managed to get past it, but I was looking through my fingers and V simply couldn't look, even though the horror largely takes place in the imagination − it's enough to know what is being suggested here (and in the follow-up moment) to fully feel the gut-squeezing shock that emptied auditoria all around the festival circuit.

Comparable cinema-emptiers like Takeshi Miike's Ôdishon (Audition) and Gaspar Noé's Irréversible were clearly more explicit, on screen. The former is stupor-inducing until its wake up and smell the coffee final half hour and the latter contains that extended rape half-way through. Another Korean classic, Oldboy features comparable scenes of cruelty to living seafood, of the kind that forced censors here to cut out one minute fifty seconds from Seom. (As V pointed out, in these sort of Asian horror films, the moment a girl's hair starts falling over her face, it's time to brace yourself!)

Anyway, it's a remarkable film for many more reasons. I've never before seen such an effective contrast between eerie, placid beauty and sharp-cornered brutishness. While most people will discuss the harm that the characters do to each other and themselves, there are also several scenes of restful gentleness, such as the one where Hyun-Shik places a flower in Hee-Jin's hair, and another where they paint his cabin together.

The setting − little painted wooden cabins floating on a misty lake where men come to fish and fuck − is at once highly abstracted and yet believable, and comes with excellent ready-made possibilities for trapping its occupants. An inherently enclosed world; yet the director constantly makes us consider stuff on the 'outside', such as the untold backstory of mute attendant-come-whore, Hee-Jin. Has she, like Hyun-Shik the man she is drawn to, a history of violent, jealous rage? What is the significance of the half-submerged blue motorbike she stares at outside the cabin window? Also, some of the key action is seen only at a distance, which forces us to make our own judgements.

I also wonder how much more I might understand if I was fully immersed in Korean culture. I wished I could have read the lettering on the windows of Hee-Jin's office for example.

It's regretable that Ki-duk Kim decided to add two basically nonsensical scenes on to his original planned ending.