Clever Turtles

I'm really lagging on the 130 K movies/year project, I know. Since I'm going to be studying in Korea during the summer hopefully I'll be able to really pick up the pace.

I actually watched the movie "301/302" a couple of weeks ago, but I was reminded to make a note of it when I ran across this article. Apparently the director, Chul-soo Park, is making a US-produced remake starring Liv Tyler and Marisa Tomei. I don't really know who either of those people are, but this might be a remake worth watching since the original director is apparently in charge. Definitely a new concept in the remake business, especially after the streak of incredibly US-remakes of K-movies. This, of course, makes a very promising topic for speculation, but I will leave it alone until a trailer is released.

"301/302" starts off looking like an incredibly bad femme fatale thriller. Bad synth music, overacting suspicious non-suspect in a missing persons case. I almost turned it off after five minutes. It's a trap! He's opening with an almost parodic nod to genre before he starts going crazy indy film producer.

A detective comes to apartment 301 to ask the resident if she knows anything about the whereabouts of the resident of apartment 302. She tells him she knows nothing, but she invites him in for lunch. See, the resident of 301 is something of a food otaku, a divorcee whose passion in life is cooking, so much that she used her divorce settlement to renovate her apartment with a kitchen that is on par with that of a five-star restaurant. As the detective eats, she begins telling him of her neighbor, an ascetic writer with extreme anorexia.

The movie becomes an exploration of food and sex and existence (all three as essentially a single concept), and the paradoxical sisterhood of these two women. I'd have to see it again to really unpack the meaning, but it consistently sidestepped my expectations and drew me in deeper and deeper. I might write more on it later, but it's hard to say much more without giving away the movie.

One interesting note I will mention, though, is that the woman of 301 in the "present" looks more like woman of 302 in the flashbacks. I don't know if that's my own failure to recognize faces or just characteristic of me as a foreigner ("y'all look alike"), or if it an intentional trick of the director that Korean audiences would pick up, too. I like to think the latter, because certain interpretations become a bit more apparent. Anyways, this question of a cultural gap makes me very interested in contrasting the original with the coming remake.