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Story

South Korea, 1969, summer. Colonel Kim Jin-pyeong (Song Seung-heon) is a decorated Vietnam War officer, the "Hero of the Goboi Plains", and soon to be promoted to general. In charge of training at an army camp in the countryside, he lives a comfortable life with other officers and their wives, despite still suffering from post-traumatic disorder from his time fighting the Vietcong. His ambitious wife, Suk-jin (Jo Yeo-jeong), daughter of the camp's head, lords it over the gossipy circle of officers' wives, and is desperate to get pregnant, blocking out the fact that Jin-pyeong has lost interest in her. One night, while out walking after having planned sex with his wife, Jin-pyeong meets their new neighbour, Chinese-Korean Jong Ga-heun (Im Ji-yeon), wife of Captain Gyeong U-jin (On Ju-wan) who's just been transferred to the camp and is a big admirer of Jin-pyeong. Jin-pyeong is attracted by Ga-heun, who is completely different from the camp's snobbish other women. During a wives' tour of the camp hospital, a patient (Yeon Je-uk) goes crazy and holds Ga-heun prisoner with a scalpel; Jin-pyeong rescues her, though she's slightly wounded. Jin-pyeong becomes obsessed by Ga-heun, whose own marriage to U-jin is more one of duty, as she was adopted and raised by his family after she was orphaned. After various clandestine meetings, the two finally make love in his jeep one rainy afternoon; but Ga-heun starts to become apprehensive when Jin-pyeong becomes ever more controlling.

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Review

A sumptuously shot, beautifully controlled drama of forbidden love between a Vietnam War hero and another officer's wife, KIM Dae-woo 김대우 | 金大又's Obsessed 인간중독 | 人間中毒 arrives like a fresh breeze through the increasingly predictable corridors of South Korean cinema. Played out on a metaphysical level, it avoids the current cliches of the country's cinema — incessant cussing, heavy drinking, nasty violence — for a classy, almost "old-fashioned" drama which mirrors the period in which it's set and in which quality dialogue and the screenplay's emotional arc are paramount. It's another feather in the cap of investor-distributor New World Entertainment, which has built an interesting slate in recent years with titles including Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp 고死 두번째 이야기 : 교생실습 (2010), All About My Wife 내 아내의 모든 것 (2012), Pietà 피에타 (2012), New World 신세계 | 新世界, Cold Eyes 감시자들, The Attorney 변호인 and Man in Love 남자가 사랑할 때.

Now in his early 50s, Kim has been a scriptwriter since the early '90s and often focused on tales of socially transgressive love — from An Affair 정사 (1998) and Untold Scandal 스캔들 (2003) (both directed by E J-yong 이재용 | 李在容) to the cheeky costume dramas Forbidden Quest 음란서생 (2006) and The Servant 방자전 (2010) (both directed by himself). Obsessed is his third film as a director and technically his most confident: kitted out with late '60s costumes and artefacts that create a slightly exaggerated period flavour, and shot in translucent pastel colours that help lift the film on to a plane of its own, it's a world away from most contemporary South Korean cinema. Just as Quest nudged a local revival in costume dramas, so the relative success of Obsessed could hopefully broaden the country's film-making avenues as well.

Among its special qualities is the construction of the script, which works in large paragraphs that help build character through substantial dialogue. Individual sequences — such as an opening army dinner, the first meeting between the two future lovers, a hospital tour that ends in drama, a picnic between the main protagonists, several scenes in the officers' club, and so on — are mini-dramas of their own, with their own dramatic shape. There's hardly a dip in the film's two-hour-plus running time as it gradually leads to an inevitable finale where emotions finally explode. Even then, however, Kim keeps a brake on the drama, with no big climactic fight to resolve the tension, or any drunken ramblings.

Despite its more literary construction, the movie is still intensely cinematic, playing on the building-blocks of melodrama but refining them into magical moments, such as Jin-pyeong fixing an ear-ring on Ga-heun, dancing with her in an officers' club, or the two having cramped sex in a rain-covered jeep. Like a '50s Douglas Sirk movie or (in a less visually flashy way) a WONG Kar-wai 王家衛 film like In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000), the characters move through an artificial, enclosed world with its own rules and social restrictions. The gossipy group of officers' wives, meeting for tea or bitching in the hairdresser's, functions like a Greek chorus, and the guitar/string score by LEE Jae-jin 이재진 (Peppermint Candy 박하사탕 (1999), Oasis 오아시스 (2002), A Good Rain Knows 호우시절 (2009), Punch 완득이 (2011)) remains a discreet accompaniment to this world.

Performances are all well etched and never swamped by the visuals. SONG Seung-heon 송승헌 | 宋承憲 (Fate 숙명 (2008), Korean remake A Better Tomorrow 무적자 (2010), Japanese remake Ghost ゴースト　もういちど抱きしめたい (2010)) makes a charismatic period lead as the flawed war hero, with just enough period stiffness. He has good chemistry with newcomer IM Ji-yeon 임지연 | 林智妍, 23, as the Chinese-Korean "foreigner" in the borderline racist wives' club who's more than aware of her perilous social status. Livening up things is a barnstorming performance by JO Yeo-jeong 조여정 | 趙汝貞 (Chun-hyang in Kim's The Servant, the title climber in The Concubine 후궁　제왕의 첩 (2012)), who's almost unrecognisable here in '60s clothes and glasses as the hero's pushy wife. It's to Jo's credit that her semi-comedic playing spices up rather than disrupts the film's overall tone.

Among the strong supporting cast, ON Ju-wan 온주완 | 温宙完 (the androgynous serial killer in The Five 더 파이브) creates an unsettling mixture of fawning and brutality as Ga-heun's cuckolded husband, while older actors like PARK Hyeok-gwon 박혁권 | 朴赫權, BAE Seong-u 배성우 | 裵晟佑 and YU Hae-jin 유해진 | 柳海眞 carve solid characters as the hero's aide and two colourful friends from his Vietnam past. Veteran YE Su-jeong 예수정 | 芮秀貞, 59, makes a major impression late on as Ga-heun's sympathetic mother-in-law who also has no illusions about her son's underlying nature.

Not for the first time in a South Korean film, there's a laughable linguistic moment in which two characters (Ga-heun and her mother) are meant to be speaking Mandarin Chinese to each other. Apart from that, the attention to detail is strong throughout. The film's Korean title literally means Human Intoxication.

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