Korean film-maker Soo-youn Lee’s slow-burn psychological
thriller Bluebeard (2017) opens with a radio broadcast of weather report
ominously announcing the possibility of warmer winters, further adding how
‘once Han River used to unfreeze completely only by April’. Interlaced with
this audio broadcast, the camera broodingly moves through an underside of a
bridge before resting on the derelict river’s shore as a headless corpse
bubbles up through the melting ice. The camera then gracefully pans up to reveal
the bustling highway traffic and cuts to the distressed face of Dr. Seung-hoon (a terrific Jo Jin-woong who played the
sleazy uncle character in ‘Handmaiden’), traveling in a bus that’s cruising
through treeless lands of huge construction sites. It’s an introductory scene that reaches beneath the elegantly structured metropolis objects to gaze at its
darkness lying within. It deftly makes a commentary on the turbulent urban
societies, in a sort of Lynchian fashion, without making much fuss. Bolstered
by Uhm Hye-jung’s cinematography, director Soo-youn builds upon this
fascinatingly odd premise, promising to deliver a subliminally creepy moody
piece. The brilliant stylistic composition, at least in the earliest parts,
generates intensity that makes us clutch for the word ‘Hitchcockian’. Alas,
with the predictable, if not inane, onslaught of twists in the third act, the
narrative implodes, leaving us with strong dissatisfaction.
Director Soo-youn Lee made her directorial debut with the
flawed yet strikingly visualized psychological horror The Uninvited (2003).
After a thirteen year gap she has made her second film, which shares her debut
feature’s themes of discounted truths and personal trauma. Despite the bizarre
and annoying twists in the later-half, Bluebeard is watchable for its
persistently effective first 70 minutes and for not following the typical
thriller blue-print which we often witness in American works. Over the last
decade, Korean screenwriters & directors have concocted some intriguing
on-screen sadistic killers. While films like Memories of Murder (2003), I Saw
the Devil (2010), and The Chaser (2008) occupies the top-tier in this unique
sub-genre, there has also been less impressive, nonetheless greatly
entertaining second-tier of killers’ movies like Midnight FM (2010),
Confessions of a Murder (2012), No Mercy (2010), Tell Me Something (1999), etc.
Bluebeard naturally falls under the second-tier.
Recently divorced and financially broken Seung-hoon, whom we
first see in the bus, is a colonoscopy specialist moving from the busy Gangnam
district to a clinic in a small town, situated alongside Han River. Despite the
menacing atmospheric tone, the narrative sporadically breaks into trademark
Korean brand of black humor. First of all, we see patients, under the effects of the sedative used during
colonoscopy procedure, babble out their awkward, dirty secrets. Seung-hoon
has rented a cramped apartment, which is filled with medical text books and
plenty of mystery novels (the doctor’s only pastime), and is situated above a
family-run butcher shop. The family’s creepy old patriarch (Goo Shin) is seen
consuming raw pork meat and his oddly cheerful son Sung-geun (Dae-myung Kim)
tries to establish camaraderie with the visibly distressed doctor. The other
members of the butcher’s family are Sung-geun’s chirpy second wife and the reticent
teenage son. Dr. Seung-hoon mostly desires to be alone, fending off the amorous
advances of his young nursing assistant Mi-yeon (Lee Chung-ah). He takes his 9 or 10 year old son to a restaurant in the weekend,
and the boy is glued to his smart phone than indulge his father with a
meaningful conversation.
The doctor’s unease escalates when
people in his hospital and news reports repeatedly talk of unsolved
serial murders in the area that seems to have resumed after a long period. One
day, the old man from the butcher shop has an appointment with the doctor.
Under the clutches of the anesthetic, the old man whispers about scattering
human parts across the river and other dumping sites; “Fingerprints? If you’re
worried, cut off the fingers…” the old man offhandedly remarks as if he’s been
doing this for decades. The paranoia that grips the doctor after this drugged
confession provokes him to put the pieces of puzzle together and get to the bottom
of the truth. Consequently, a mysterious retired cop (Young-chang Song) starts
surveilling the doctor. Seung-hoon drinks with the old man’s son and in drunken
stupor he slips into the shop’s freezer and finds an important evidence to
support his claims: a human head packed inside a black, plastic bag. Soon, the narrative spirals off in different
directions and the conflict between butcher and the doctor seems to get more
personal. It all culminates with the predictable first layer of twists, over-explained
with flashbacks. Later, we witness the purposefully convoluted and kitschy
second layer of twists which totally robs the narrative off psychological
profundity.
Director Soo-youn Lee abruptly cuts the scene, employs fade
out and the diabolically framed scenes are often revealed to be the
protagonist’s vivid nightmares. The nightmare episodes increasingly used to
insist upon the blurring of boundaries between reality and imagination for
Seung-hoon. The repetition of ‘it’s all a dream’ reveals, after a time gradually
lessens our interest in the narrative (cheating the viewers too much). All the
earlier disjointed cuts and nightmare episodes easily make us to guess
Seung-hoon to be the text-book definition of unreliable narrator or beholder. Although
the director unnecessarily prolongs these earlier scenes, adding more and more
subplots, there are some memorable and deeply unsettling visual flourishes (for
example the surrealistic scene where the butchers sharpen their knives as a
naked headless body hangs from the hook). The other interesting aspect, from
visual standpoint, is Soo-youn’s observation of these freshly popped-up cities.
It’s as if she is representing such urban sprawls as the hideous facet of a
society (of course, a great no. of outstanding serial-killer films has deftly
associated industrialization and rampant expansion of urban spaces with serial
killing). Nevertheless, the unconvincing and ill-advised point-of-view shifts
in the last half of the film basically undo certain intriguing narrative
threads. These insanely prolonged flashbacks and ‘story’s not yet over’ twists
suffer from severe lapses in logic and pacing issues. In the end, the film
becomes a mess rather than being a puzzle.
Trailer
Even though Bluebeard (118 minutes) isn’t a path-breaking
Korean thriller, it’s good for half of its running time, exuding a palpably
menacing mood. And, those who love thrillers wrapped inside insane amount of twists (no
matter how absurd it is) may find it alluring.
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