Tears

After spending five months in Garibong-dong, a district in Seoul, Director Lim Sang-Soo's Tears was a movie based on his recollection of those five months. Han, a young runaway, and Chang, an over-the-top teen, are close friends. Chang is a foulmouthed, womanizer while Han is a quiet and humble virgin. As they venture into the streets of Garibong-dong and jump from apartment to apartment, they encounter a young hooker, Lan, and Seri, a paint-sniffing young woman who finds comfort in the hands of Han. And this forms the unlikely group of teenagers facing the hardships of street life.

What more can I say? What else is there to say after that? I mean come on! Hookers, drugs, runaways-sounds like another KIDS ripoff. Heh. Well, here's the thing. The movie was shot totally in Digital Video format and it looks as if the movie itself was a documentary on young teenagers and their lives in these unforgiving streets. Tears is a gritty and shocking tale of the spirit of untamed youth and the wildness that ensues.

Taking cues from his experience in a homeless-ridden district in Seoul, Lim Sang-Soo set out to display the graphic nature of his work. While filming on DV mainly to conserve cost, the movie actually benefits from the look and feel. The characters and their relationships come to life as each scene grows more and more distinct in flavor. From the beginning, we have Han and Chang at a little get together in a café with friends . . . and hookers! At that moment, I knew I was watching one of those documentary-type films. And when Chang begins to use the hookers as punching bags and sexual objects, hell, that just solidified my case.

I commend the director for his rawness in Tears. He takes us into a world where confusion and despair are of the ordinary and pain is just the icing on the cake. There are scenes where we see women being punched in the face and slammed on the ground. Other scenes where we see how desperate they are to leave their world behind by inhaling paint fumes because they probably can't afford a decent form of illegal drug to abuse. It's shocking, yet melancholic the way these teens are depicted on screen. The sex scenes, yes the sex scenes, are even worse. The horrible past experiences of one of the girls creep up on her as she can't perform in bed even if she's in the mood. And the other girl comes to terms with her escort service occupation as she's confronted by her own father. This is just some of the many truths that'll be unveiled to the viewers as they watch the movie.

What moves this movie in the forward direction is of course its unknown cast. Believable is an understatement as we see these teens trudge down the mean streets. Chang is a bleached blonde young man with a taste for sexual intercourse and beer. His life is all about living off his sexual partners' apartment and cash. Han, the runaway, is probably the staple point of the film. He's ordinary in many ways and seems to be the conflict in the story. Here is a young man with the rest of his life ahead of him, yet he wants to escape that and follow a crowd that may or may not be alive the next day. Lan is a prostitute with a thing for braids. She loves Chang and is solely committed to making him happy even though she knows of his cheating ways. Her life will never reach further than her one room apartment. And lastly, the most troubled of the group is Seri, an attractive young lady who rides like the wind on her motorcycle. She finds the open arms of Han and sees that he is everything she needs to move on in her life. But she must first forget about being raped by a family member while she was younger because it's troubling her sexual performance with Han. And she must persevere and defeat her paint-sniffing ways before actually moving on. These four characters make up the stereotypical teens from the street. And it remains the stronghold of this film.

As much as the characters were believable enough, the ending is left to be desired. The director builds up this growing relationship among the four and then suddenly jerks it into another direction. It left a very foul taste in my mouth and it wasn't the Twix cookie bars I was eating. Tears take us through a candid look at sex, drugs, and . . . sniffing. If it's a documentary-type movie that's gritty and raw you're looking for or if you're looking for some topless nude shots, then Tears is your choice. Other than that, no real justifiable reason to watch or get it.

Kirei : The Terror of Beauty

Yoko Noguchi is a beautiful and successful plastic surgeon with a very peculiar patient- a psychologically unbalanced woman named Yoshie. Yoshie begs Yoko to perform surgery on her when all other doctors refuse. Yoshie behaves like a very obvious loony, but she is loaded with money (although does not appear to be rich) which she lavishly pours on Yoko. Yoko ultimately accepts the challenge, but after the operation realizes that it was only the beginning: after having her face corrected, Yoshio wants her belly and later her virginal vagina operated as well… Yoko succumbs to these demands as well, but making Yoshie beautiful is only the preparation for a very ugly ending…

If you are tired of J-horror being equated with ghostly female black-haired apparitions, THE TERROR OF BEAUTY offers a reminder of another popular staple of Japanese horror - the equivalent of hard R splatter in which the accent is put on body horror with strong surgical overtones, filled with moralizing about human mortality and hypocrisy. As this sub-genre is usually very low budget (unlike its more respectable, ghostly cousins), another element commonly found in it is plenty of sex and nudity.

Who would be better to provide this kind of entertainment than Katsuya Matsumura, whose fame lies mostly in the wonderfully, unbearably sicko/sleazy ALL NIGHT LONG series (five parts so far, but only the first three are available in the English speaking world). Beneath the veneer of crude direct to video exploitation the ALL NIGHT LONG flicks actually provided a genuine, original and surprisingly intelligent satire on modern Japan, especially the world of otakus, outcasts and youth gangs indulging in all kinds of depravity. THE TERROR OF BEAUTY would seem to provide an excellent opportunity for another inspired mixture of satire and sleaze, ideas and gore, sex and death, social concerns and opportunistic exploitation. Unfortunately, the end result is below the expectations that this author and these themes would seem to inspire.

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY suffers from a lame script which is too simple-minded and straightforward to provide enough food for either brain or… well, whatever organ the gore hounds have. By deciding to mystify Yoshie’s origin, including the incredible amounts of money at her disposal, the scriptwriters deprive the film of any real drama. The two main characters are sketched in broad strokes: a beautiful but greedy plastic surgeon and an ugly AND creepy disturbed woman. That is all you learn about them. Yoko’s boyfriend is not even a cipher- it seems that his sole function in the flick is for Yoko to have someone to talk to and thus speak up her thoughts to the audience.

Of course, coming to a film like this, character development may not be your first demand- but Matsumura, surprisingly, disappoints even in what he’s usually doing best. The nudity quota is relatively low (for his standards), the surgical tools are barely touched, the explicit operations are present in a couple of uninspired seconds and the gore scenes are limited to splashes of unconvincingly colored violet/red liquid. To be honest, there are a few queasy moments involving liposuction and at the very end, when the frail beauty, recently operated, starts unstitching. The common viewer has enough of unpleasantness to cover his/her eyes from, but more experienced splatter-fans, anxiously expecting to see what kind of aces Matsumura may have up his sleeves could be a bit disappointed.

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY is obviously a quickie whose no-budget makes the ALL NIGHT LONG series look like SCREAM. It’s limited to three different rooms and as many ‘characters’, so there’s not much production value to speak of; the camera is barely functional, but most of the scenes are over-lit and lacking in any kind of beauty. The score is sweet, quiet and barely noticeable while the make up effects are decent, though obviously cheap, and not nearly as prominent as you might expect from a film with a ‘surgical’ plot like this. All in all, this flick is watchable since it’s not too boring (but it’s not too exciting either!), so some viewers –you know who you are!- may want to rent it, but note that it is not a highly rewatchable film which would require a constant place in your collection.