Secret Tears
Director: Park Ki-hyeong
Year: 2000
Rating: 6.5
Country: Korea
When this Korean
supernatural film was released in 2000 it lasted in theaters about the length
of the lifespan of a mayfly. Nobody showed up and it quickly disappeared
from sight like a newsman who masturbated on Zoom. This was unexpected considering
that the director was Park Ki-hyeong who two years earlier had directed Whispering
Corridors as part of the High School girl horror trilogy to acclaim and good
box office returns . But as I watched the film I could understand that reaction
- it is ponderously slow, deliberate and drawn out as the story emerges almost
from a cocoon of passivity. Park is in no rush to give the audience thrills
and often will stick with a close-up a few seconds longer than is the norm
- uncomfortable - just staying there as the seconds tick by - gazing at his
two main actors as if invading their thoughts.
It creeps along though building a mood
of unease, of dark expectations but he never throws out a jump scare or really
any horror - it is as much a tragedy, a forbidden unrealized love story
- perhaps what you might expect in a moral folk tale told in hushed tones.
It is beautifully shot, quite artistic in the camera placement and obsessively
provides more close-ups than in a Johannes Vermeer exhibition. I actually
quite liked it. It just got a hold of me. Much of it due no doubt to the
eyes of Jang Min-Kyung, that are otherworldly, larger than a sauce pan at
times, deeply morose, quietly beseeching and a little scary. Her eyes do
all the acting for her in this. Clearly, the director was entranced by her
eyes as well. This is the only credit she has so my guess is that the director
saw her somewhere and said this is the girl I need for this film.
Three friends from work - two men and a
female - are out drinking at a karaoke - two of them are having an
affair - Hyeon-nam (Jeong Hyeon-woo) and Do-kyung (Park Eun-suk) - while
Ku-ho (Kim Seung-woo) is recovering badly from his wife leaving him with
a parting gift of telling him that she never loved him. They drink too much
and get in their car and drive. A young girl in her high school uniform sits
on a curb - staring at a giant moon when a tear emerges like a scream of
despair - as it rolls down her cheek it begins to rain in sheets of water
- she stands up in the street and gets hit by the car. He body flies thirty
feet into the air and lands with a crash on the concrete.
The three rush out expecting she is dead
but she doesn't have a scratch on her. Ku-ho takes her unconscious body back
as he is frightened to report this - when she wakes up she has lost her memory
and her ability to talk. But as the film moves along she seemed to have gained
something as well. Powers. An ability to communicate without talking and
an ability to move water. Ku-ho begins to fall in love with this young girl
- she with him - he needs to fill an empty hole, she because she knows nothing
else. His two friends keep telling him he can't keep her - why not - they
find out who she is and that some bad things happened in her past. And her
powers are growing. Again, this attached itself to me like a dream not quite
forgotten but it takes patience and perseverance at 105 minutes. A lot is
left unexplained by the director - why wasn't she hurt when the car hit her,
did she do something venal in the past, why are her powers growing, did she
have powers before the crash - all murky and never answered.
