Kim Ki-Duk releases another deeply personal study on relationships in this dialogue light movie. As is his norm, it is beautifully shot, but more intimate than his
‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring’ due to its close urban setting, more like the uncomfortable and violent
‘Bad Guy’ . The young cast is excellent, and there is more emotion portrayed in their looks than what many lines of dialogue would bring. A brave move by a brave and challenging director.
Tae-suk (Jae Hee), is a loner, handing and posting out restaurant pamphlets on front doors and then returning to find where they have not been removed. This he treats as an invitation as the owner is away. He breaks in and makes himself at home, picking up any laundry that has been left, washing, drying and then putting it away. If there is anything broken he’ll fix it. This is his payment for taking advantage of using their abode while they are gone and perhaps a meal from their refrigerator too.
One house he enters, he believes that is empty and starts to get comfortable but he is not alone. Sun-hwa (Seung-yeon Lee), the battered and bruised wife of businessman Min-kyu Kwon (Hyuk-ho), is cowering in a corner.
A relationship forms between these two, but not without the use of some golf balls on the abuser husband. Not a word is spoken and they jump on his bike and head off, leaving a shaken and bruised husband with a 3 iron near by. The silence of the pair is in direct contrast to the shouting, verbally and physically abusive marriage that she was in moments before.
More houses later and the pair have taken on the role that he was doing previously and when they enter a house with boxing photographs on the wall you know this will not end well.
A dead body later, an old man's of natural causes, the pair end up in a police station. Still not a word said but here is when Ki-Duk goes back to his earlier film
'Coast Guard' , and uncomfortable masochistic violence erupts which borders on torture at the hands of the police and the cuckold husband. Because of what has went before you are almost programmed by the director to let you guard down and then thudded over the head. Is this necessary for the story to unfold... perhaps not.
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