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Bad Guy
He forced me into prostitution, and it felt like a kiss
2001
Review: March 7, 2008
Director: Ki-duk Kim
Starring: Jae-hyeon Jo, Won Seo, Yun-tae Kim, Duek-mun Choi
If you like. Not necessary.
THE SETUP:
Woman insults guy who assaults her, so he forces her into prostitution, then watches her be repeatedly raped.
DISCUSSION:
Having watched the kick-ass Time, I became curious for more films by Ki-duk-Kim, who has a reputation for delivering movies that are pretty edgy about relations between men and women. And this one sounded pretty edgy…
We first meet our main guy [can't really call him our hero], Han-ki, as he is eating a sausage on a stick. He spots this attractive young woman, Sun-hwa, waiting on a park bench. He goes over and sits next to her—and it becomes apparent to us that he has a pretty nice body. He also has an ominous scar clean across his throat. She lets it be known that she is NOT. INTERESTED. Her plump nerd boyfriend shows up to her relief, and Han-ki walks by her and her BF, then comes back, grabs her, and forcibly kisses her for almost a full minute. She demands that he apologize, but he says nothing. Some nearby soldiers demand an apology for her as well, and when Han-ki makes to walk away they attack him—yes, we have some martial-arts action—then force him to her. He still says nothing, and she spits on his face! Sure she had every right to do that, but still—she might come to wish she hadn't. The fact is, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away—and know when to run.
So Han-ki follows her and her boyfriend around. Then he follows Sun-hwa alone, and sees her tear out a page of a book in a bookstore. When she makes to leave, there is a wallet lying near her. She takes it to the restroom, steals the cash, and dumps the wallet. The cops arrest her immediately, and tell her the only way she can get out is through a bribe. And the only way she can get a bribe is to take a loan. And the only way they'll give her a loan is if she signs herself into prostitution. She signs a contract saying "I give up all rights to my body," and is brought immediately to a brothel. This woman is having one hell of an afternoon, eh?
Sun-hwa is dressed like a whore—very creepy—then begs that her first time be with her boyfriend. She's a VIRGIN. I'm unclear what happens here—we see her and her boyfriend in a van, and he can't for some reason, I'm guessing the emotional upset and pressure, and the thugs, including Han-ki, beat the boyfriend to a pulp. Then suddenly Sun-hwa is in this red-light district where there are a bunch of small [like 6'X6'] rooms fronted entirely by sliding glass doors, and small rooms in the back, where the scrumping goes on. There are a few, very creepy scenes of all the other prostitutes being QUITE forward and aggressive in getting guys to come in [they essentially grab them by the arm and start dragging them in], while Sun-hwa just sits there, staring at the floor, catatonic in her "sexy" whore wear. It's disturbing! Finally some guy comes in and engages her services, taking her in the back and raping her! And Han-ki watches it all, right up close, from behind a two-way mirror right next to the bed. We then see him sitting there, watching multiple rapes [Sun-hwa is struggling and screaming and crying, there is NO QUESTION that what we're watching is a rape], and afterward we see him watching her as she cries and writhes in pain. Somehow I don't think we're going to be seeing an American remake of this starring Jessica Alba.
Okay, let's stop to discuss. Whenever you have rape on film, there's the question of whether the rape is exploitive or not—and generally most people think it almost always is. In this case, I think it is fair to say it is. The reasons? For one, the movie goes out of its way to cast Han-ki as sexy. He has a nice body that he shows off in clingy clothes, and there are several shots of him doing things like sensually smoking, letting the smoke play over his face. Secondly, because we are adopting Han-ki's point of view as we watch Sun-hwa be raped, we are not in an objective perspective, but specifically in the point of view of someone who has arranged this situation and is getting off on it. Finally, that scene of Han-ki watching Sun-hwa crying after one rape. This makes a good comparison with a similar scene in I Spit on Your Grave, perhaps the poster movie for the issue of rape in cinema, due to its extended gang-rape and public screeds against it by Siskel and Ebert. That movie also had extended scenes of the raped woman crying afterward, but since they were captured by the "objective" camera [i.e. not tied to one character's perspective] they worked to express the horror the victim felt. These very scenes went a long way toward making the rest of the movie seem quite anti-rape. Here, we are watching Han-ki watch Sun-hwa cry afterward, so we are vicariously seeing it through his eyes. And, knowing what we know about the story, it seems that not only is he enjoying it, but her suffering is the VERY thing he wants to achieve. So when we watch the rape and its aftermath through his perspective, yes, it seems extremely exploitative. We have to keep in mind that we [or at least I] am far less with the culture and conventions of South Korea, and that this director is specifically trying to be provocative, but in general I think one can safely say this is fairly exploitative.
At some point Sun-hwa realizes that Han-gi is the one that did it to her, and she comes right after him, of course to no avail. He drugs her, then they go her room where he fucks her, then she pukes on his shoulder. Awesome!
Okay, now things—if you can believe it—START getting disturbing. Sun-hwa is bored one day, so she goes to the wardrobe and dresses herself up like the other whores… she is starting to accept her life. The other thugs are all starting to fall in love with her, and many of the customers prefer her to the other prostitutes, which makes the other women turn on her. Han-gi punishes the other thugs that want to exploit her—even though he is, of course, exploiting her. Such is the murky morality of the underworld. At one point Sun-hwa is able to escape, but then finds she has nowhere to go. She wanders around for a while, then Han-gi easily finds her and brings her back. He gets drunk one night and lays with her, kissing her hand. It's very tender, and the music is very tender, the whole reality of what the situation is left in the background.
So while all this is going on there is this escalating war in the world of the thugs. Han-gi gets punched out by some dude, then turns a poster into a SPIKE [useful weapon-making practices, vol. 345] and stabs a guy in the neck with it! Then we see some other guy walking along, carrying a shard of glass slightly smaller than a surfboard. He walks up to Han-gi and STABS him with it! These people are serious. So Han-gi is sent to prison, where he gets a visit from Sun-hwa, who screams at him "You can't die like this! You ruined me! Come on out so I can kill you!" And you start to think "Holy shit, she is NOT going to fall in love with him, is she…?" Well, I told you it got disturbing.
On the way back, this other thug leaves Sun-hwa on the side of the road [i.e. releasing her from prostitution] and she just gets right back in the car. Later Han-gi is released, and he reveals to her that he has been watching through the mirror. Yep, they are pretty much in love. He takes her to the park bench where he found her, and they have an emotional goodbye—again, setting her free. Soon after this he gets in a fight where he speaks—he has not spoken for the entire movie—and he has a super high-pitched voice that can barely get words out. Are we supposed to think that this is why he is? And that's why he treats women the way he does? It certainly might account for his limited pickup and courtship skills. He then walk up and lets this guy stab him—but he's pretty much fine. Okay—this dude is the Terminator. He has sustained some SERIOUS life-threatening injuries [impaled by the glass surfboard was pretty bad], but no, he's fine. Just a flesh wound.
Anyway, Sun-hwa finds him on the beach and silently sits down beside him. There's this whole thing where she had cut the face out of photos of herself, and now she finds the face and puts it back in the photo—she's a whole person again? She has regained her identity? Photos and the beach also figured prominently into Time. Then Han-gi leaves her again… and she finds him again. The music during these scenes is very tender and romantic. The end!
So… there ya go. The movie doesn't really seem to make much of a point about anything—it refrains from judging Han-gi or Sun-hwa, and doesn't really seem to be making much of a statement at all. It certainly doesn't seem to be saying that all women will eventually fall in love with their abusers, and it doesn't seem to be saying it's totally wrong for women to be forced into prostitution—or really anything. It's hard to know exactly why this film exists, except to provoke and provide a very different sort of love story. I have to say, however, Sun-hwa's conversion is very convincing. Both from a normal woman into a prostitute, and also her slowly falling in love with Han-gi. Both are handled very slowly and gradually and come off very realistically; especially when we can tell Sun-hwa is in love long before she knows it.
< < < SPOILERS END
Again, a very curious movie. It just tells a straightforward story without a big twist or revelation at the end… it just wends its way, then stops. It was very well directed and acted, it's just that it just doesn't leave one with all that much. It goes in a linear line—has a slight zig when one expects a zag—but nothing too surprising, then it ends. As always with foreign films, it's hard to tell how all of this would come off in its native context, or what resonances we're missing, but… yeah, pretty straightforward.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If it sounds interesting to you. I think most people could probably totally do without it, and I DON'T think the National Organization for Women is on board with this one.
RELATED MOVIES:
TIME is another movie by the same director, and is also a merciless examination of the way men and women engage in self-destructive games with each other, but is more of a horror movie, and 20 times more accessible than this one.
