All three were quite middling but enjoyable enough. Lover was a very strange film that starts off almost as a softcore porn film but tries to become a serious romance film towards its conclusion. I didn’t find that transition at all believable, but it does have one or two very realistic and relatable scenes focused on emotional unavailability and lack of commitment in relationships which made it worth watching. Love Guide For Dumpees was pretty stupid but it did make me laugh and the two leads had good chemistry so it was also worth the time investment. It also had some surprisingly complex and dark themes around depression and suicide which I did not expect at all. Thirst was a much more serious film from Park Chan-wook, arguably my favourite director, but I found it to be inconsistent and not up to his usual high standard. I think it could have worked well if he’d played into the religion angle more and made it an allegory about the Catholic Church (there is a lot of potential with the themes and visual symbolism), but he doesn’t take that idea far enough so it ends up being this sort of quirky vampire/romance/dark comedy thing which is interesting but fairly predictable and never really that entertaining.
I watched a few Korean films last week:
All three were quite middling but enjoyable enough. Lover was a very strange film that starts off almost as a softcore porn film but tries to become a serious romance film towards its conclusion. I didn’t find that transition at all believable, but it does have one or two very realistic and relatable scenes focused on emotional unavailability and lack of commitment in relationships which made it worth watching. Love Guide For Dumpees was pretty stupid but it did make me laugh and the two leads had good chemistry so it was also worth the time investment. It also had some surprisingly complex and dark themes around depression and suicide which I did not expect at all. Thirst was a much more serious film from Park Chan-wook, arguably my favourite director, but I found it to be inconsistent and not up to his usual high standard. I think it could have worked well if he’d played into the religion angle more and made it an allegory about the Catholic Church (there is a lot of potential with the themes and visual symbolism), but he doesn’t take that idea far enough so it ends up being this sort of quirky vampire/romance/dark comedy thing which is interesting but fairly predictable and never really that entertaining.