As One

As One

Director: Moon Hyun-sung
Year: 2012
Rating: 8.0
Country: Korea

There are not a lot of films out there that I am aware of about ping pong. So when I come across one I leap at it like a slow high shot to my forehand. There is the wonderfully fanciful and imaginative Ping Pong from Japan in 2002, a film that I just saw referenced called Top Spin from the USA in 2014 and this rather lovely film As One. I really got into Ping Pong about 4 years and play it whenever I can. I just love it. As I did much of this film though in truth it is so predictable I could have written the basic outlines on a napkin in five minutes. But sometimes films should fill that predictable need in your soul. Comfort food. Meat loaf.

This is actually based on a true event and I don't even want to know how far from the truth it strayed. I want to believe it happened just like this. With the Winter Olympics closing and the co-operation between the two Koreas watching this 2012 film was perfectly timed. In 1991 right before the Table Tennis World Championship in Japan, North and South Korea decided to combine their teams. And from that point on exactly what you think is going to happen in fact happens.

South Korean cinema is the Master of Emotional Manipulation. They simply can hit the right emotional notes like a master concert piano player which is why their TV shows are hugely popular throughout Asia. Here they have a lot to play with - two female rivals from the north and south who grudgingly have to team up, a sick father likely on his death bed, one of the players playing through sickness with grit and spunk, the hated Chinese smirking over their superiority, a romance that breaks out, North Korean security guards who crack down but eventually show mercy, lots of soju being drunk and most of all the dream of a united Korea.

No doubt this film was helped a lot for me with the performances of my absolutely two favorite Korean actresses, Ha Ji-won and Bae Doo-na. I have seen them both in a lot of films but as best as I recall never together. Ha Ji-won was in the horror film The Phone, the comedy Sex is Zero, the Sword fighting film Duelist directed by the great Lee Myung-se and the TV series Damo. Bae Doo-na has gone more international with a role on the American TV show Sense8, Jupiter Ascending, Cloud Atlas, one of my favorite Japanese films, Linda Linda Linda and of course many Korean films, perhaps the most famous in the West being The Host as the girl determined to kill the beast. They are both terrific in this film though unless they have been practicing a lot of ping pong recently their shots were special effects - but their swings and motion were perfect. As are they.