London Korean Film Festival – Bristol

Shin Sang-ok had a prolific career, with more than 100 producer and 70 director credits to his name, earning him the nickname ‘The Prince of South Korean Cinema’. His 1958 classic The Flower In Hell thrilled audiences with its bold aesthetics, its mixing of genres, and its incorporation of documentary footage. Throughout the film, Shin draws attention to the relationships that working class Koreans had with US soldiers, refusing to shy away from the dark side of 1950s Korean society.

Episodic, meandering and offering the mere ghost of a narrative, the film, too, is neither this nor that – but the apparent simplicity of Hong’s monochromatic long takes conceals a theatricalised artifice whose players may merely be A-reum’s fictions, or even lost souls.