Festival darling Kim Ki-Duk is no stranger to controversy. During his relatively short, yet prolific, career – 15 films in 12 years – his work has been the target of criticism for all manner of reasons, ranging from animal cruelty to misogyny and blasphemy. If nothing else, this means any new film by the Korean auteur is welcomed enthusiastically by critics around the World, keen to see how Kim is going to shock and awe them this time. But while there is no denying the power and quality of his earlier works such as The Isle, Samaritan Girl and 3-Iron, his last couple of releases have lacked the same punch. In some ways Dream could be considered Kim’s attempt at a romantic comedy, although it is more often masochistic than romantic and rarely laugh-out-loud funny. That said there are frequent moments of levity, the likes of which seem out of place in Kim’s body of work.
Japanese heartthrob Odagiri Jo plays Jin, a chop-maker living and working in Seoul. Jin inexplicably speaks Japanese throughout the film, which nobody ever comments on, even though all the other characters are speaking Korean. Jin has a vivid dream in which he is involved in a hit-and-run. When he wakes up, Jin drives to the spot of the accident, only to discover it has really happened. The police use CCTV footage to trace the offending vehicle, and Jin follows them when they go to arrest the young female driver. Her car has clearly been in a very recent crash, but Ran (Lee Na Yeong) knows nothing about it. Jin joins them at the police station where he claims responsibility for the accident. It quickly becomes apparent to Jin that his dreams cause Ran to sleepwalk, acting out his nocturnal thoughts. Jin and Ran are both obsessing about their previous relationships – Jin was spurned by the woman he still loves, and his dreams centre on his attempts to win her back. Ran, on the other hand, detests the man she dumped, but Jin’s dreams cause her to seek him out and seduce him, causing her no small amount of stress and heartache when she awakes each morning.
They form an uneasy alliance, moving in together and sleeping in shifts to avoid these nocturnal occurrences, but as the nights pass they struggle with fatigue, compounding their sense of loss and mounting complex feelings for each other.
The central conceit of Dream is easy enough to swallow. What is more implausible, however, is that Jin and Ran seemingly live in a bizarre parallel world where caffeine does not exist, let alone any stronger stimulants. On more than one occasion, the viewer is consumed by an overwhelming urge to sit them down and make them both a mug of coffee. Or perhaps crack open a can of Red Bull. Jin’s attempts to stay awake quickly descend from comical matchsticks-under-the-eyelids moments to ever-increasing acts of implausible self-harm. Suffice to say, chisels seem very much en vogue in Korean Cinema this season, after The Chaser and now this.
By the hour mark, Kim has seemingly tried his own patience long enough, unable to appease his dark side with trivial matters such as dream worlds and broken hearts. The final act gives way to all-too-familiar scenes of violence and self-mutilation that one easily associates with the director’s earlier work, and which, try as he might, he simply cannot abandon And by the end the audience is faced with yet another blood-soaked tragedy, when for much of the running time it genuinely seemed like Kim was trying to do something different.
Kim’s familiar flair for mise en scene and visual design is present. Jin and Ran’s homes are beautifully composed to reflect their work and personalities – imminently habitable environments inviting nothing better than comfort and sleep. Kim’s effective use of music, which becomes suitably intrusive in the film’s final minutes, will echo around your head long after you have left the cinema. There are also many individual moments to enjoy throughout – particularly a dream-world set-piece staged in a blustery wheat field – that show how accomplished a filmmaker Kim can be, but in this instance serve only to make promises that Dream as a whole simply can’t keep.
James Marsh |
