Actresses and women characters in 2015 Korean cinema
It is difficult to list non-monodrama films that have no female character at all, and it is even more difficult to list films where female characters take the control of the story and remain “uninstrumentalized” by male-created perspectives. Represented by a handful of women characters, labor drama
Cart, comedy
Venus Talk and horror film
The Silenced might be three of the extremely few exceptions.
Some say blame the market where female-driven movies don’t sell, others say there is no actress who can take such a big responsibility to carry the whole movie on her own, while the rest say there is no such film with proper women characters to begin with.
As if they were to prove that the latter does not work, a few 2015 films did present dominating female characters. That is exceptionally exceptional considering the decade-long trend of the Korean film industry that has been weighted to towards male-driven narratives. Though it does not necessarily mean that they made money or had right feminist approach, they do show that there are clearly those charming actresses who are capable of heading up an entire movie.
Women in Korean Noir and Action Movies
In most Korean noir movies, women characters are often illustrated as ambitious femme fatale that seduce males leads to rip them off (
Marine Boy), or the boss' sexy mistress (For
the Emperor, Gangnam Blues). There are also quite many cases where women characters are mere supporters to men (
New World).
Coin Locker Girl: Women in the ghetto
Represented by a veteran actress in her 40s and one of the hottest rising actresses in her 20s,
Coin Locker Girl is definitely a rare Korean noir with female loan sharks in the lead. Kim Hye-soo and Kim Go-eun, do not fall for one of those stereotypes in the movie.
In the gritty drama-thriller, Kim Go-eun, the starlet in
Eungyo, appears as a girl who has been raised by a tough moneylender, played by
The Thieves heroine Kim Hye-soo after being left in a subway coin locker as an infant.
Director Han Jun-hee's stylish yet simple first feature seems to be largely powered by the glowing performances of the two actresses. Kim Hye-soo successfully carries out her symbolic role by giving up her usual sensual charm and changes herself to a tough, stone-hearted mobster. Kim Go-eun's role in the film is not one of the most typical women characters in noir genre either; she is the focus of the story-not a supporter or a solacer for men-who has to face and live up to her fate on her own.
Though it is more that Coin Locker Girl merely hires actresses to play some of those conventional male roles, rather than creating new female characters from an original perspective, Kim Hye-soo still says "Coin Locker Girl is unique and special as it brought women characters to the center of the hotbed of crime that used to be only for men."
The Shameless: Shining Figure Head
Compared to
Coin Locker Girl, The Shameless is even closer to the stereotype of masculine noir genre where Hye-kyung (Jeon Do-yeon), criminal thug Jun-gil's (Park Sung-woong) mistress, falls in love with Jae-gon (Kim Nam-gil), a petty cop chasing Jun-gil.
Though it is true that Cannes' favorite Jeon is the so-called "one top" figure head of the well-made drama, Hye-kyung is not totally a new character that has not existed in previous noir flicks. That is rather natural, considering the genre's frame where a man and a woman usually fall in love when they are not supposed to. Hye-kyung does not turn her cold shoulder to Jae-gon after she realizes who he is. Instead, a romantic atmosphere is again created between them as they face each other again.
In a sense, Hye-kyung's character merely represents what men would want from women in such circumstances. However, the veteran actress says "Hye-kyung has always been chosen by someone, but Jae-gon is the first one that she chooses out of her own will which is why she wants to stick with him after all that."
As a melodrama with some noir setting,
The Shameless' virtue does not come from how it injected some strong independent woman's traits to Hye-kyung's character, but from how Jeon's character analysis and performance actively prevented Hye-kyung from becoming another devoted, unegotistical woman that exists for her man.
Assassination: Ode to the Unnamed Woman Sniper
2015's most successful local release, Choi Dong-hoon's nationalist caper movie Assassination is full of characters and their stories. Among the bunch, female sniper Ahn Ok-youn, played by Gianna JUN, is no doubt the focal figure. Creating striking female characters is one of Choi's strengths. In
Tazza: The High Rollers, Kim Hye-soo was the game controller while four out of eight characters in his previous film The Thieves were female.
He says Assassination started from a simple idea that there must be women among those unnamed nationalists in the history and he wanted to bring that person to the center of the film. "I do not want to just display a female character without giving it a specific role in the drama," says Choi.
Centering on a woman sniper who leads the assassination team and makes decisions for them,
Assassination is a rare rifle action drama that creates a room for a female protagonist. It is not merely a gender play where an actress plays a mannish character and styles the film as a female film; clearly a woman who chooses to disguise herself as her dead twin sister and undertake the mop-up operation in wedding dress that she would otherwise never wear, Ahn still makes the bold decision to devote herself to helping her country achieve independence.
Best appreciated for her girlish, pretty roles in romantic comedy
My Sassy Girl, or hit TV drama
My Love from Another Star, Jun seems to have succeeded in making her audience raise their expectations about her career with
Assassination.
Actresses alive in earnestland of Korean cinema
Even Jun, who would unanimously be chosen as one of the top Korean actresses, says that it is extremely difficult for actresses to be picky about offers because they are not given a wide array of options to choose from.
2015 is a rare year where a handful of movies with female leads were made. Singer, actress Lee Jung-hyun was the cherry-on-top of newcomer Ahn Gooc-jin's low budget indie
Alice in Earnestland, which made an exceptional hit for an independent genre film. Seo Yeong-hee in Cannes' Un Certain Regard screener
Madonna showed acclamation-winning performance and added depth to the tragic drama.
Again, about the lack of "real female films,“ some say blame the market where female-driven movies don’t sell, others say there is no actress who can drive. And the rest say there is no such film with proper women characters. With the first and the last theses still being ongoing issues, rest assured, Korean cinema does have actresses to do the job.
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