Tag: rats

The Pollen Of Flowers (Hwaboon)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

A film which owes a clear debt to Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968), director Ha Gil-Jong’s debut The Pollen Of Flowers has a lot of other things going on too. It’s believed to be the first Korean film to depict a gay character (actually a bisexual and the film features two) and watching it today as a Westerner, it also brought to mind films as different to Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968) as The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963) and The Masque Of The Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964). In terms of Korean cinema, the films of Kim Ki-young are an obvious influence. There’s also an element of political allegory in there. All in all, quite a potent, mixed cocktail of tricks and influences.

Businessman Hyeon-ma (Nam Goong-won) lives at the Blue House with his mistress Se-ran (Yun So-ra) and her prepubescent sister Mi-ran (Choi Ji-hee). The Blue House is also the name of the home of known Korean heads of state, which adds a whole other layer of meaning to everything going on here. (Historically, South Korea was run by dictator Park Chung-hee between his ascension via military coup in 1961 through to his assassination in 1979. The Pollen Of Flowers was made bang in the middle of that period.)

What sets the ball rolling is on the one hand that Hyeon-ma brings home his gay lover Dan-Ju (the director’s brother Ha Myung-joong) and on the other Mi-ran has her first period (some four years before Hollywood would broach the subject of menstruation in Carrie, Brian De Palma, 1976). Much like the protagonist of Theorem, the quietly spoken Dan-Ju proceeds to sleep his way around the other two members of the household. The unexpected ending, like the last line of a Biblical parable, has a mob of creditors turn up to between them seize all the household’s goods in order to pay for losses incurred by Hyeon-ma’s company. This chaotic ending for me echoed the orgy followed by the plague in The Masque Of The Red Death.

Weaving around all this plot is the maid Ok-Neyo (Yeo Woon-kai), spoken to severely to keep her in her place, who is given to such actions as putting live rats into a room through its window while the two people inside are having sex. She immediately brings to mind the social climber trying to steal the husband of the family for who she works in The Housemaid/Hanryo (Kim Ki-young, 1963). She also increases the tension when the household is already on edge by playing a classical drum instrument. This comes after Dan-ju has sat in the garden repeatedly and noisily bashing a small rock against hard ground. As well as this sound, there’s an unexplained, repeated banging that goes on which for me recalled the paranormal knocking noises in The Haunting. But since The Pollen Of Flowers, whatever it may be, isn’t a ghost story or a horror story, one wonders what this noise is supposed to be – forces about to erupt and overwhelm the status quo of the Blue House, perhaps? In places, there’s also an extraordinary psych-prog-jazz score.

The LKFF is playing two more Ha Gil-Jong films in conjunction with the Barbican’s occasional Hidden Figures strand: The March Of Fools (1975) and his personal favourite The Ascension Of Han-ne (1977). (Not to mention a couple of Kim Ki-young films at the ICA.) Having now seen The Pollen Of Flowers, I honestly can’t wait. Movies really don’t come any more dirtylicious than this.

The March Of Fools (1975) Director: Ha Gil-Jong Wed 6 Nov 20.30, Barbican Cinema 2, book here.

The Ascension Of Han-ne (1977) Director: Ha Gil-Jong, Sunday 10 Nov, 18.00, Barbican Cinema 2, book here.
Goreojang (1963) Director: Kim Ki-young, 5 November⋅18:15 ICA, book here.
Ieoh Island (1987) Director: Kim Ki-young, Tuesday, 12 November⋅18:15 ICA, book here.

The Pollen of Flowers plays in LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival. Watch the festival trailer below:

I Lost My Body (J’ai Perdu Mon Corps)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This unique 2D animation opens with a discussion about how to catch a fly before splitting into two parallel narratives. In one, a severed hand goes on a quest in search of the body from which it has become detached. In the other, boy meets girl. This is the boy who at a later point in the film will lose his hand in an accident. The opening fly discussion turns out to be a flashback of the boy.

The hand shows great ingenuity as it escapes rats in a subway, climbs medical skeletons in a storage room and duels with an aggressive pigeon in a roof gutter. It has a pretty hard time of it physically. And when it eventually finds its body, reuniting with it proves far from simple.

The boy, Naoufel (voiced by Hakim Faris in the seen French version and Dev Patel in the upcoming English dub), is working as a pizza delivery boy, a job to which he isn’t particularly suited. One night, he gets involved on a minor road accident which means he’s late with a delivery. The customer for whom he’s late is a girl, Gabrielle (Victoire Du Bois in French, Alia Shawkat in English), living in a block of flats. He gets into a long and involved entryphone conversation with her and, without knowing what she looks like, falls in love with her voice.

Naoufel then sets about trying to track Gabrielle down. This leads him to her ailing grandfather who he talks into giving him a woodworking assistant position in the man’s workshop. This turns out to be his dream job. But he initially wants the job to be near the guy’s granddaughter. And then these relationships go horribly wrong.

This will keep you guessing as to how the hand got severed and how the whole thing is going to work out. En route, the plight of the hand searching for its body will keep you riveted as it undergoes a series of perilous scenarios, while the parallel story of the boy, the girl and the grandfather proves genuinely affecting. Assorted flashbacks revealing elements of the boy’s childhood and his relationship with his father also prove illuminating.

It’s difficult to know how the film would play out as special effects live action – but as 2D animation, it works just fine. It’s not a horror film, more a sort of action-adventure, existential romantic drama, captivating in the relationship parts and thoroughly compelling throughout.

I Lost My Body premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 22nd and on Netflix from Friday, November 29th.