Retro Fun
It’s been a while since we had a good ol’ fashioned breast-binding/junk-tucking farce.
Pilot
Director: Kim Han-gyul • Writers: Jo Yu-jin, Kim Han-gyul, based on the screenply by Erik Ahrnbom
Starring: Cho Jung-seok, Lee Ju-myung, Han Sun-hwa, Shin Seung-ho, Oh Min-ae
South Korea • 1hr 50mins
Opens Hong Kong Aug 15 • IIA
Grade: B
If you ask me, the gold standard of cross-dressing comedies is still Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot from way back in 1959, partially because Jamie Lee’s dad Tony Curtis looks tremendous as a woman, and partly for its killer, subversive closing shot. Others would argue Tootsie bears that honour (meh), or maybe Mulan, She’s the Man or Yentl. And to be clear, we’re talking comedies where someone has to pretend to be the opposite sex – in a gender binary world – to get something that’s slipping through their fingers. In the case of Hot, it’s freedom from death after witnessing a mob hit. In Tootsie it’s acting work, as it is in Pilot | 파일럿, Kim Han-gyul’s way-less-offensive-than-it-could-have-been airline workplace comedy. Maybe it’s the feminine eye.
Based on the 2012 Swedish film Cockpit, Pilot is one of those broad, almost farcical romps that puts our hero/heroine in all sorts of awkward positions as they try to navigate the world as The Other, and in doing so realise just how fucked up a place it truly is. Now, yes, to get into Pilot for what it is you need to set aside the idea that non-merit based hiring for a job like, oh, say, airline pilot is boneheaded, but that’s not what the film is about, so problem solved. Kim and co-writer Jo Yu-jin hit the exact same beats Tootsie, Mrs Doubtfire and likely Cockpit (didn’t see it) did, so there aren’t any real surprises, but credit where credit is due: the women characters are – gulp – well realised and never need to play dumb to advance the plot. Alert the media.
Needs some girl time
Han Jung-woo (Cho Jung-seok, Hit-and-Run Squad) is a hot shot, celebrity airline pilot (!) with Han Kuk Air who gets turfed from his captain’s job after a boneheaded, drunken, viral moment at a company party in which he says some real, real stupid shit about the women staff. In his defence he was trying to run interference for his CEO Noh Jung-wook (Hyun Bong-sik) but he finds himself a liability. He needs a job – he has a mortgage for himself and his estranged wife (Kim Ji-hyun) and son (Park Da-on), and a second for his Lee Chan-won-obsessed mother, Ahn-ja (Oh Min-ae, Concerning My Daughter) and sister Jung-mi (the film’s MVP, Secret member Han Sun-hwa), a beauty YouTuber. You think that will be important?
Anyway, as Jung-woo struggles to find a flying gig and gets flat out ignored at an interview with Han Air, his chauvinistic junior officer Seo Hyun-seok (Shin Seung-ho) lets it slip that no one’s hiring at the captain level unless they’re a woman, especially CEO Noh Moon-young (Seo Jae-hee), who runs the LCC sister of Han Kuk and is her brother Jung-wook’s business rival. Needless to say, Jung-woo takes a cue from another pilot at the interview session, Yoon Seul-ki (to know TV actor Lee Ju-myung), and before you can say friendly skies, “Han Jung-mi”, pilot, is born. Cue the shopping montage, the media sensation montage, awkward romantic attractions and ultimate betrayal of the sisterhood with way less gay panic than Tootsie had.
As much as Pilot wants to bang the drum for equal opportunity and gender equality, it’s just as much a treacly drama about a guy who’s kind of a selfish dick and has to lose all he holds dear to become a better man. Say it with me: it’s a tale as old as time, and neither Kim nor Jo bring anything new to the table. That said, when Jung-woo figures out his son wants to be a dancer, his lack of a freak-out is a refreshing non-event. Ditto for the smarter, wiser, more observant people that surround Jung-woo – with the exception of Hyun-seok, who obliviousness is required for comic effect, and Seul-ki’s, whose is required for dramatic effect. For all Pilot’s rote visuals – this could be a TV series compilation – Kim’s reluctance to lean into vulgarity is a welcome change of pace too.
Cho is a game participant. He doesn’t go too big with the drag routine (though tripping in heels is a must) and he brings just the right degree of masculine physicality to bear; his forgetfulness is often pitch perfect. But it’s Han who winds up being the glue that holds Pilot together. She’s equal parts deadpan, OTT, flustered and baffled in just the right doses, and she makes the whole thing better whenever she’s on screen. Her borderline madness at Ahn-ja’s birthday party – the requisite event that demands our hero/heroine be two people at one event scene – is top shelf comic timing and expression. Get this woman her own movie. — DEK