BAD GUY

Unrepentant in its willingness to peel back the polite socially conservative skin of cultural taboo with fingers (and blades) dipped as much in subversively thoughtful questions of society and the individual as they are in semen and blood, Asian cinema has long been infamous (and revered) for daring to descend where others fear to tread. A cinematic stab in the guts, Asian films take seriously issues either skirted around or completely ignored by Western filmmakers who are ruled more by ticket stubs and special interest groups than artistic integrity or pathos. Slapping expectation in the face, refusing banality, and spreading apart taboo subjects like two grimy hands forcing open a battered pair of thighs, Bad Guy is an emotionally scathing, psychologically intense attack against the senses. Terrorizing and titillating, this vivisection of sexuality, gender politics, and culpability is a problem-child of twisted love, abuse and alienation told honestly and without pity.

Directed by Korean Kim Ki-Duk, the brutally poetic story opens with a sensual slow shot of a scruffy man noting an attractive woman on a park bench. When their eyes meet a sense of unexplainable friction accompanies the moment, followed by his attacking her before restrained by police. Even when she looks down at him, and he at her, we know the moment isn't over, and that this brief meeting will end in wounds of flesh and spirit. Han Gi, the 'bad guy' of the title, as much victim as victimizer, implicates his love object in a pick-pocketing scam, degrading her spiritually, psychologically, and physically in this anti-romance of gritty, self absorbed love is played out. This isn't the love of storybooks or sanitized soap-opera housewives, nor is the feeble stuff of machismo inspired flesh-fantasies. No, this is a dangerous, primal, destructive emotion - the urge to possess and be possessed, the moth running to the flame to die in ecstasy. Taking his object of desire and dominance to the red light district where he can baptize her further in debauchery and excess, involving her in a prostitution ring, Han Gi is no less a victim of his fragmented, sick desires than the woman who strangely, masochistically begins to feed off her captivity and the perverse pleasures of power struggle. It is this power struggle that nourishes the painfully honest characters even as it kills their spirits.

Trading emotional scars and seeking nourishment in the pleasure pain, this subversive ménage of kink and spiritual rape is just as devastating, brutal, and uncompromising as it sounds. Ugly precisely because the events, people, and philosophical areas it studies are bleak and brutal, Bad Guy ask no friends and refuses to play by the politely sanitized rules of a ruling class or mainstream audience status quo who desire surface entertainment rather than challenge. Sure to arouse the anger of the censorious as well as the ignorant, this shattering assault against expectations is surprisingly as touching as it is offensive. Taking to her Stockholm syndrome so quickly that one is tempted to wonder if she didn't have the predisposition (or a repressed desire) for this manner of sexual degradation in the first place, Sun-Hwa wields power as much as she is controlled by it, performing sexual acts with others for the voyeuristic pleasures of Han Gi.

Low on dialogue and high on style, the most significant moments are captured in silence with primal impulses and revelations captured by the staring camera and character's facial expressions/body language. While the plot is uneven, becoming more convoluted as the couple's relationship intensifies and quasi-surreal elements intrude, moments of disturbing tranquillity broken by even more disruptive bursts of violence lend authenticity and an inner sense of dream logic to the proceedings, suggesting a relationship between sexual excitement and violence.

As honest and intelligent as it is exploitative, Bad Guy is most remarkable for the refusal of its director to preach or lay blame. He watches the action unfold with the innocence of a child, the glee of a sadist, and the impassivity of a passerby. It's his purpose to show, the probe, to watch, not to force values like bitter pills down your throat. Precisely because he doesn't preach, the movie is lent a disturbing atmosphere of both realism and erotic violence, repulsive and darkly attractive at the same time. Surreal in execution and as anti-politically correct as one can get, this is a poignant examination of people on the fringes of society, strangers to themselves and others, and the twisted, largely subjective process of love and hate, destruction and creation. Enlivened and deepened by an odd yet undeniably felt tenderness, Kim Ki-duk's poem to perverse love and search for self is as important for what it doesn't do as for what it does. He makes us voyeurs of other voyeurs; we spy on Han Gi spying on Sun-hwa as she sexually surrenders her body. The expressionistic scenes of deathless stabbings and suicides on the beach signify a move from surface text to a symbolic cinema of the mind. The movie begins to stand for more than itself, signifying universal relationships at odds with themselves.

Kim Ki-Duk's image and sound is preserved with respect and attention to technological detail in this loving release of a controversial jab at western idealism. In spite of occasional grain, the movie is honored with vibrant imagery and deep, pleasing colors that enhance the actors and their surroundings. Skin tones are sensual, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 track assaults the mind as the images challenge the eye. Extras include a trailer, a behind-the-scenes music video, a photo gallery, and a director interview, wherein he discusses such themes as cultural class prejudice and inequity. Curiously absent is mention of the sexual roughness or politics of the story.

While critics content to wallow in pseudo-psychology and the blathering beats of the cultural herd will be sure to emphasize the 'misogyny' of this film, trying to find some sort of justification or moral for what they deem to be the tasteless aesthetic representation of a woman stripped of power, I believe that the movie is so very strong because it surmounts such petty dictates, refusing to engage itself in such a predictable argument. Is the film misogynist because it treats women violently? Is any film that treats women likewise misogynist, indicating a hatred or objectification of women? Not unless art is forced to focus only on limited spectrums of the human condition which are controlled by the moral majority.

If art is an aesthetic tool with which to represent life in believable shades, than it has an obligation to examine just as closely, and with as much honesty, the controversial, and dark elements of existence as it does to treat upon the positive. Kim Ki-Duk does the former, and for this he is to be commended. Blurring the already frail lines between such concepts as right or wrong, victim or victimizer, Bad Guy is an ode to the bizarreness of human relationships taken to unhealthy extremes. That even an echo of emotional love or dependency exists amidst such moral filth and emotional madness is oddly endearing.

Review by William P Simmons