<
BACK
Director Kim Ki-duk and actor Cho Jae-hyun took their film,
``Address Unknown,'' to the Venice International Film Festival on
Tuesday. This is the second time for one of Kim Ki-duk's films to be
invited to the prestigious festival for competition, after last
year's movie ``The Isle.''
The 58th Venice Film Festival, which runs from Aug. 29 through
Sept. 8, decided to screen ``Address Unknown'' as its opening movie.
Kim's latest feature film follows the lives of three youths in
the 1970s, with a U.S. Army base as a backdrop. The director's
``implied violence,'' one of the dramatic devices he often takes up,
is contrasted with three youngsters, who were rejected from society
after the Korean War.
The main character, Chang-guk, is the offspring of a Korean bar
waitress and an African-American soldier. Eun-ok, with a cataract in
her left eye, is a girl who agrees to bestow her body to an American
soldier in exchange for getting eye surgery, and Ji-hum is a silent
boy who can't manage to deal with his disabled Korean War veteran
father.
As we have seen in so many novels, dramas and movies, Chang-guk's
mother, a former prostitute, writes a string of letters to her
husband, who has left for the U.S. She anxiously tells her son that
his father will soon bring them to the U.S. Her letters, however,
are always returned with the stamp ``Address Unknown'' on the
envelope, where the title of the movie comes.
Kim implied that all the characters, not only Ji-hum's father,
are ``disabled veterans of the Korean War,'' although none of them
seem to realize that.
The film, unfortunately, attracted no more than 10,000
movie-goers and was pulled from cinema screens only a week after its
release, making it another of his films that are unpopular at home,
but rather highly estimated by overseas film festivals.
Cho Jae-hyun, who turned up as a ``dog butcher'' who met his
death after being attacked by a flock of angry animals, and who
starred in Kim's recently completed film ``Bad Guy,'' accompanied
him to the film festival.