Description

One of this year’s key Asian film discoveries, this bold, brilliant and wholly unconventional thriller is quite possibly the best thing to break out of South Korea since Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Memories of Murder. Our not-so-happy story begins with married, middle-aged music professor Park Young-sun taking his young student In-Jeong for a drive. He knows how much she looks up to him, and parks his car in a desolate stretch of countryside hoping to pressure her into some easy opportunistic sex. Things don’t go as smoothly as hoped for, and the lecherous professor quickly finds himself alone in his car, his student high-tailing it into the woods. He must now sit and wait for her return. Soon enough, there are sounds of movement nearby, but what he hears are not the noises of his student’s expected return in defeat. Instead, Park finds his car surrounded by a muddy group of thugs. It is unclear exactly why they’re in the mountains, but they’ve been beating the living hell out of a college kid in a canvas bag and they don’t appear to be the social types. Park’s approach to the situation is the decidedly wrong one to take…

A blistering dose of social commentary and jet black ironic satire, A Bloody Aria blasts holes through the undercurrents of bullying that exist in almost all aspects of daily civilized life and suggests some very dark reasons behind our collective need for authority figures. In this film, all relationships are questions of power exchanges, everyone’s being used by someone else, and subjugation is sometimes as essential as oxygen, food or water. Writer/director Won Shin-Yeon frequently establishes seemingly traditional scenarios within various genres, from crime film and neo-noir to Calvaire-like backwoods horror, faking his audience out into the comfort of familiarity in order to tear into entirely unexpected directions that never cease to amaze. You’ll cringe. You’ll gasp. You’ll be sweating it out on the edge of your seat and sometimes you’ll find yourself screaming with equal parts laughter and shock. Shin-Yeon’s dialogue and direction are sharp beyond belief. The performances he derives are uniformly inspired, particular standouts being Shiri’s Han Seok-Gyu as a cop with serious control issues and Lee Mun-Sik, who, as one of the crazed locals, gives a career-defining turn that ranks alongside Choi Min-Ski’s strongest moments in Oldboy. Mega-engrossing and as entertaining as it is provocative, A Bloody Aria is an out and out masterpiece. Beg, cheat or steal to see this one on a screen.

—Mitch Davis

“You will be shocked, thrilled, repulsed, and entertained. You might even see some part of yourself somewhere” – Graham Lewis, ASIAN CULT CINEMA

“Intense… visceral… frequently very funny… A brave, powerful and unconventional film… The lines between right and wrong are not so much blurred as thrown out of the window, as the characters gradually become more and more animalistic, yet at the same time, somehow more human” – James Mudge, BEYOND HOLLYWOOD

Credits

Director: Won Shin-yeon
Screenplay: Won Shin-yeon
Cast: Han Suk-kyu Cha Ye-ryeon Kim Shi-hoo Oh Dal-su Lee Byeong-jun
Producers: Lee Seo-yeol
Distributor: Imaginasian Entertainment/Prime Entertainment