‘Web’ Master
Kim Jee-woon can rarely be called ‘wacky’ but he gives it his best in his Chungmuro send-up.
Cobweb
Director: Kim Jee-woon • Writer: Shin Yeon-shick
Starring: Song Kang-ho, Im Soo-jung, Oh Jung-se, Jeon Yeo-been, Krystal Jung, Jung Woo-sung
South Korea • 2hrs 15mins
Opens Hong Kong October 26 • IIB
Grade: B
One thing you can’t accuse writer-director Kim Jee-woon of is making the same movie twice. In his 25-year (!) career so far, he’s dabbled in comedy (The Foul King), horror (A Tale of Two Sisters), sci-fi (Illang: The Wolf Brigade), espionage thriller (The Age of Shadows) and western (The Good, the Bad, the Weird). Occasionally he’s combined his genres (The Quiet Family could be called horror-comedy) and too often he ranks as the forgotten third director to come blazing out of Korea in the 1990s and 2000s; he slots right between Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. This time around he’s trying artistic farce, and whether or not the film is autobiographical is up for debate.
Cobweb | 거미집 comes from that most amusing of sub-genres: The movie about desperate directors making movies. Think of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, Derek Yee and Lo Chi-leung’s Viva Erotica, James Franco’s The Disaster Artist, or the granddaddy of them all, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. For some reason, watching a filmmaker gradually but inevitably lose their shit and control of their art – if they ever had it – is endlessly entertaining. In Cobweb, Kim favourite Song Kang-ho plays Kim Yeol, a director so desperate for acceptance from critics and his Chungmuro (that’s Korean Hollywood) peers he’s willing to burn the studio down to prove he has a masterpiece in him. Cobweb doesn’t quite have the meditative style of early Kim, or the deeper historical comment, or the gonzo bloodletting of his own spin on the revenge thriller, I Saw the Devil, but it is a slick, often hilarious romp, something too many Korean filmmakers have forgotten how to make in recent years.
This is before the fire
The action (or “Go” as Kim Yeol says) begins with trashy hack Kim putting the finishing touches on his latest film, “Cobweb”, and waiting to see if Korea’s censors will give it their stamp of approval. It’s 1970, and Korea’s dictator years have just begun, so the film’s producer, Chairman Baek (Jang Young-nam, fantastic) is very, very concerned about approvals and not getting the studio, Shin Sung Film, shut down. When she goes out of town on business, Kim ropes Baek’s eager-beaver niece, Mi-do (Jeon Yeo-been, Alienoid) into helping him re-shoot the ending on the sly and in doing so make his “masterpiece”. They have two days. Mi-do helps him get the primary cast back on the soundstage, including rising star Han Yu-rim (pop star Krystal Jung Soo-jung), leading man and Yu-rim’s secret lover Kang Ho-se (Oh Jung-se, Switch), who happens to have trouble keeping it in his pants, and veterans Lee Min-ja (Im Soo-jung) and Mrs Oh (Park Jung-soo). This plan, naturally, leads to drunken ministers, bruised artistic egos, deep dark secrets being revealed, hostage-taking, and a creature feature finale that no one truly understands.
Kim has a tremendous amount of fun with Cobweb, both the film written by Shin Yeon-shick (The Russian Novel, Rough Play) and the film-within-a-film, and mines Korea’s rich melodrama history for all its worth, while poking it just enough to gently roll it upside down. DOP Kim Ji-yong (Decision to Leave), production designer Jeong Yi-jin and costume designer Choi Eui-young are really the stars here, with the former’s rich black-and-white making “Cobweb” (and the closing scenes) worth the effort, and the latter’s understated, evocative detailing making the time and place almost tactile. Mi-do’s jacket and Kim Yeol’s trench coat are simply fantastic. Yes, it demands egregious amounts of disbelief suspension given that’s not how films are made, but Kim knows that. He’s nothing if not studied. If you can let it go, you’ll get into Cobweb.
Ironically, given how censors across the globe have been sharpening their blades in recent years and the particular glee with which the Koreans allegedly did in the ’70s, Kim and Shin don’t really dive into that aspect of the story. Instead the aim is broad comedy and increasingly wacky/zany shenanigans that are entertaining enough, but don’t say much about art, creativity, freedom of expression or ambition – despite a raft of artistic meltdowns and Kim’s own frantic efforts to keep all his plates in the air. That lack of depth (for wont of a better word) makes the fat running time a bit hard to justify, and by the time history starts to repeat – Kim’s third favourite leading man, Jung Woo-sung has a cameo as over-excitable director and studio founder Shin Sang-ho – Cobweb’s gotten a bit flabby. Song is his usual charming self, here leaning into sad buffoonery, and Shin has written four solid women characters, which has to be a record for a Korean film. That makes some of the more self-indulgent bits forgivable. It’s not Kim’s most imaginative work, but it’s clearly a subject near and dear to his heart. — DEK
do you know kim?
A Bittersweet Life (2005)
Kim’s neo-noir made Lee Byung-hun a star, and showcased his visual flair and ability to elevate rote material.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008)
The kimchi western loses steam after its great train robbery, but stars Lee, Song and Jung are just stupidly cool.
The Last Stand (2013)
Of Asian maestros to go Hollywood, Kim did best with this border thriller that resurrected Ah-nold the badass.