Woman Is the Future of Man
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Tae-woo Kim and Hyeon-a Seong Ji-tae YuDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Korean (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: New Yorker Video
Movie Reviews of Woman Is the Future of Man
Movie Review: A very rewarding Korean drama...
Summary: 4 Stars
Hong Sangsoo is a film professor turned director. I have seen only 2 of his films, "Virgin stripped bare by her Bachelors" and this one; "WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN". The director is an artist concerned with alienation and the "battle of the sexes". Sangsoo definitely has a fondness for subtle symbolism and repetition in tales of unsympathetic relations and the mistake of always trying to recapture the past, not being able to let go.
This director is a minimalist and a very strict one at that. He avoids cinematic manipulations like close-ups. Most scenes in his movies are done in 1 take, wide shots and limits camera movement. He gives his performers a wide berth to fill a scene. I think he uses an observational perspective.
The tale begins when 2 old chums meet for a lazy afternoon, which will lead to a drunken weekend. Munho (Jitae Yu) is a married art teacher, while his friend, Hunjoon (Teawoo Kim) had just returned from his film studies from the U.S. the screenplay is about "slow reveal", blossoming occurrances and "woman..." starts with Munho making a point not to invite Hunjoon into his home. Munho offers Hunjoon to walk into the backyard to walk on fresh snow.
Two of the potent symbolisms are shown when Hunjoon takes a few steps on the snow and backtracks in them on purpose so that the path will seem like it had suddenly stopped. As for this scene; it is a piece of symbolism: 1)an abandoned path (stopped walking forward)means no set direction or I suppose from the title's standpoint "no future" 2)Hunjoon walking backwards in his steps means a desire to go back and relive the past.
As for the act that Munho didn't let his friend inside his home, Munho has harbored anger when Hunjoon gave his spouse an " friendly American" hug when they went to visit him in the States before. Munho is a man of resentment and insecurity.
This becomes the premise of the film. The 2 men-kids drink and eventually reminisce about a shared romance back in the college days, Sunhwa (Hyeona Seong, The Intimate, Time). They inadvertently decide to see her and in turn, their past failings resurface. For Hunjoon, he remembers Sunhwa as a fragile girl that he had mistreated. He took advantage of her when he supposedly tried to "cleanse" her (by having sex with her) after she was raped by an old school chum, then dumping her to attend film school in America. For Munho, he dated her while Hunjoon was in the states attending film school. He remembers her as an awkward sexual conquest. The ultimate irony is that the two men are unable to see their shortcomings when it comes to women, they express their frustrations in their drunken pleas for punishment, at the same time, they are pathetic and ignorant--they are doomed to commit their past mistakes.
VIDEO/AUDIO: ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN. The transfer is kept simple, not very striking. The PQ is not vibrant, somewhat soft and lacking in contrast. But is very clean, free of print damage. Korean Language 5.1 Dolby and 2.0 surround with English subs.
EXTRAS:
Liner notes by Michael Atkinson and Kyung Hyun Kim.
French and Korean Theatrical Trailers.
Introduction by Martin Scorsese (this is very nice).
Interviews with the three leads & Making of Featurette .
OVERALL:
WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN is a very rewarding drama. The dvd is not technically sound, but this film has a lot to offer fans of Korean "art" films.
RECOMMENDED!! (4 stars)
Summary of Woman Is the Future of Man
Like Wong Kar-wai and Tsai Ming-liang, New Korean Cinema luminary Hong Sangsoo marries Asian and European sensibilities. Michael Atkinson in The Village Voice cannily dubbed him "the love child Antonioni and Hou Hsiao-hsien never had," while Woman Is the Future of Man could be described as a postmodern, post-romantic riff on Rashomon and Jules and Jim, refracting an unstable ménage à trois through two misaligned perspectives.
The film's ruefully comic view of modern love centers on the Mutt-and-Jeff dynamic between two mismatched buddies - tall, placid art professor Munho and short, volatile filmmaker Hunjoon - who share an inconsistent passion for the same woman, artist turned-bar-girl Sunhwa. Shuttling between the summery past and the snowy present, the two recently reunited friends drunkenly recall their failed relationships with Sunhwa, littered with broken promises, fumbled opportunities, and sexual gaucheries (no one but Hong captures the indelicacies of the bedroom with such wincingly unsanitized candor). Employing a hyper-observant camera style acutely sensitive to quicksilver shifts in the emotional weather, Woman Is the Future of Man is a wry, wistful discourse on the immaturity of men, the fickleness of memory, and the elusiveness of love.
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