Korean Movie Review #4: Paju (2009)

(Sources: left, right)

I’m not allowed to love this person?

Because you say I can’t, I want it all the more.

With posters like these, then you could be forgiven for thinking that Paju (파주) is about some forbidden, Lolita-like relationship between the 2 main characters. Indeed, add promotional photoshoots of Seo Woo (서우) and Lee Sun-gyun (이선균) necking, or Seo-woo perched expectantly on the side of a bed, then why wouldn’t anyone believe initial media reports that this is basically a tale of an “outrageous high-school student” who, with “a mix of innocent and provocative appeal”, falls in love with her older sister’s husband?

A deep and complex movie that actually features nothing of the sort, Paju (파주) is very much undermined by such prurient marketing, and leads the cynic in me to believe that was designed to counter its otherwise ponderous and depressing tone by titillating audiences. Add too that Paju requires numerous suspensions of disbelief, is often frustratingly vague, and ultimately doesn’t seem to go anywhere, then despite its accolades, it’s not a movie I can easily recommend to anyone but the most dedicated Korean film buffs.

And yet despite myself, I find myself agreeing with reviewer Darcy Paquet that it is “without question, one of the best Korean films of 2009,″ for reasons I didn’t fully appreciate when I first saw it six months ago. One is that, with events unfolding in a sequence not unlike Pulp-Fiction (1994), Paju has a confusing patchwork of flashbacks and flash-forwards that defies recounting here. While this was very frustrating at first however, the timeline of events does resolve itself in the end, and in the meantime audiences are very much forced to think for themselves.

Also, although ostensibly about Joong-shik (Lee Sung-gyun), Paju is really about his relationships with three women: first, with Ja-young (played by Kim Bo-kyoung/김보경) eight years earlier, that ends with a harrowing incident involving her baby that sets the tone for the rest of the movie; next in his marriage to Eun-su (played by Shim Yi-young/심이영), whom we soon learn dies in a gas explosion in their shared home; and finally with his much younger sister-in-law Eun-mo (Seo-woo), although it is this last is very much the one that anchors the story. And in particular, these women’s roles (and the skill with which they are acted) are very much one of the strengths of the movie, and something that can be difficult to appreciate for those, like myself, not very familiar with Korean cinema. For, as Elizabeth Kerr of The Hollywood Reporter put it, director Park Chan-ok (박찬옥):

…is able to do something many filmmakers can’t or won’t, and that’s draw a realistic picture of modern femininity that’s blessedly free of the stereotypes that make up movie women. There’s no shrieking or weeping from Eun-mo when she recalls the events that lead to her sister’s death; Eun-su’s reactions within her fragile marriage are empathetic; and Joong-shik’s first live-in lover Ja-young, doesn’t have any ulterior motives when she re-enters his life.

(Source)

Nevertheless, it is also these relationships – or, rather, Joong-shik’s role in them – that are ultimately the movie’s undoing. Because, constantly running away from her problems aside, if Eun-mo did indeed both have the hidden strengths and be as mature beyond her years as the movie suggests, then (spoilers ahead) she would certainly have been able to recover from learning that she was the cause of the gas explosion that causes her sister’s death; if, indeed, she needed to be told anything more than she died in a gas explosion at all. By telling her that Eun-su died in a hit-and-run instead however, then, rather than protecting her, Joong-shik ultimately leads her to believe that he’s hiding something, possibly for financial gain.

When he professes towards the end that he’s loved her all along then, in fact only marrying Eun-su to get closer to her, then she doesn’t reciprocate because of his apparent deception. And, never showing her anything but the appropriate platonic feelings for his former student and now sister-in-law, this scene in particular comes across as awkward and forced, let also this constant motivation of his suddenly retroactively detracting from his actions throughout the entire movie.

But why then, does he permanently sabotage any chances of them becoming lovers by refusing to tell the truth?

(Source)

I discovered the solution by realizing what so bugged me about an unrelated observation by Darcy Paquet:

In part, it is the film’s willful obscurity that gives it its strength….Personally I liked that the story’s misunderstandings persist through to the end: this is not a film where all characters come around to accept the same interpretation of the events we have witnessed. Because each character carries a different understanding — and no character possesses complete knowledge of what happened — there is a layered complexity to the film’s emotions.

In short, I think this is a fundamental misreading of the obscurity’s purpose. Rather, it’s only two characters have different understandings of events, and, like I said, Joong-shik very much possesses enough knowledge to change Eun-mo’s. But he doesn’t because, in a jail cell falsely accused of Eun-su’s murder and/or insurance fraud, he all-too-readily acquiesces in his incarceration, seeing it as a sort of penance and catharsis for either the accident with Ja-young’s baby and/or his (oft-stated) earlier insincere social activism that, in hindsight, he has seeking ever since he arrived in the city of Paju. As, indeed, his loveless marriage to Eun-su arguably was earlier.

A noble but seemingly futile act, it will suddenly make a lot more sense if you watch the following beautiful scene from Strange Days (1995), which I was very surprised and lucky to find on YouTube. Please do indulge me for 96 seconds, taking special note of what Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) says at 1:24:

Unlike Strange Days however, which showed Lenny Nero the ultimate futility of mere atonement, Paju suggests that therein lies Joong-shik’s ultimate salvation. And in that sense, I’m left with a feeling that, despite appearances, it’s actually much closer to Crime and Punishment (1866) than Lolita (1955).

(For previous Korean Movie Reviews, see here)