- The Bow
Moebius, the newest film from controversial South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is currently screening at Facets Cinematheque, and J.R. Jones has a capsule review in this week’s paper. In his review, Jones writes “the content is audacious, to be sure, but so is the form; the entire story transpires without a single word of dialogue, and this strategy isolates and heightens the ugly physical urges at work. This is not for the faint of heart, but to Kim’s credit, it’s not for the faint of mind either.”
- The Isle (2000) Kim once said that “violence is a kind of body language for some people,” which explains why his characters are often silent but communicate their emotions via physical behavior. The intersection of sex and violence is probably the single most overexplored theme in art-house cinema, but Kim has the ability to render repellent material transfixing and, on occasion, beautiful. Such is the case with this early feature, which has subject matter so extreme it baffled critics at the time. (Talking about the film’s Sundance premiere, Roger Ebert wrote that “people covered their eyes, peeked out, and slammed their palms back again.”); if only they knew what was to come.
