I have to admit that this one got past me almost completely. I had genuine trouble following it. It takes place in a Korean girl's boarding school. One of the students finds the diary of a dead girl. (That diary is great, a creative collage full of hidden pills, mirrors, strange powders, odd sayings, including the eponymous Latin expression.) Another girl jumps to her death for reasons we don't know. The girl who finds the hidden diary swallows a pill from it, follows clues, discovers a veritable treasure trove of similar goods secreted in the bottom of an upright piano by the dead student. Among these items is another pill -- "This is the antidote. Take it if you trust me." She takes it, feels unwell, flops on a couch, the camera bores into her pupil, weird events take place for the next half hour, the camera removes itself from her aqueous humor, the weird events continue anyway, it rains a lot, students run around in an overhead shot looking like streams of ants, the face of the suicidal girl appears gigantically above the skylight in the gym like Woody Allen's mother in "New York Stories." I got the girls mixed up and had a difficult time telling them apart, especially when they are shot from a distance or upside down, as happens from time to time. It's almost the case that they all look alike. They're all kind of pretty. They dress the same. They all have lank long black hair. Their voices sound identical. They're built alike -- gangling, narrow-shouldered, small-bosomed, slim-hipped -- their slender legs ending in clumsy black boots. And although they are in their mid-teens, they have the restless magic energy of children. They run around, shrieking and playing grab ass everywhere they go.
When the movie was over I felt as if I'd just stepped off a souped-up merry-go-round, exhausted and a little dizzy.
All that confusion aside, which may reflect lacunae in my interpretive apparatus, the story plays true. With a couple of exceptions -- profanity and pregnancy -- I could believe this is how girls might act in a place as alien to my sensibilities and experience as a Korean girls' boarding school.
The intentionality behind the film is a very feminine one. Whoever was involved in putting it together understood girls. It's loaded with intrigues, jealousy, the uncovering of secrets, and worries about physical appearance. Teenaged boys have the same concerns of course, but probably not to the same extent. If this were a story about boys there would be more open arguments and fist fights.
There's a homosexual element too. It isn't just friendship. One of the girls is clearly in love with another and there are hints of other affairs. But I'd hesitate to call it lesbianism. It's situational homosexuality, the kind you find in prisons. The girls have lost none of their femininity and one or more of them appears to have had an affair with the teacher -- handsome, young, very fortunate Mr. Goh.
What "horror" there is, is slapdash and confusing. It would probably have been a better story of the horror had been either hinted at or eliminated entirely, and the narrative hung entirely on a few well-differentiated students.
I gather that others have found this really entertaining, so I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it. It's not my bowl of bul-kogi but it might be yours.
When the movie was over I felt as if I'd just stepped off a souped-up merry-go-round, exhausted and a little dizzy.
All that confusion aside, which may reflect lacunae in my interpretive apparatus, the story plays true. With a couple of exceptions -- profanity and pregnancy -- I could believe this is how girls might act in a place as alien to my sensibilities and experience as a Korean girls' boarding school.
The intentionality behind the film is a very feminine one. Whoever was involved in putting it together understood girls. It's loaded with intrigues, jealousy, the uncovering of secrets, and worries about physical appearance. Teenaged boys have the same concerns of course, but probably not to the same extent. If this were a story about boys there would be more open arguments and fist fights.
There's a homosexual element too. It isn't just friendship. One of the girls is clearly in love with another and there are hints of other affairs. But I'd hesitate to call it lesbianism. It's situational homosexuality, the kind you find in prisons. The girls have lost none of their femininity and one or more of them appears to have had an affair with the teacher -- handsome, young, very fortunate Mr. Goh.
What "horror" there is, is slapdash and confusing. It would probably have been a better story of the horror had been either hinted at or eliminated entirely, and the narrative hung entirely on a few well-differentiated students.
I gather that others have found this really entertaining, so I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it. It's not my bowl of bul-kogi but it might be yours.