Korean Cinema at 67th Venice Film Fest: ‘Anti Gas Skin’ Added to Closer ‘Oki’s Movie’

Not much is known on the Orizzonti (Horizons) selected “Anti Gas Skin” from Kim Gok and Kim Sun, what I do know is this is Kim Gok’s fourth feature film – the helmer won the Grand Prize at the 2008 Seoul Independent Film Festival for “Exhausted“, and previously directed Capitalist Manifesto: Working Men of All Countries, Accumulate! (2003) and Geo-Lobotomy (2005). 

The other offering in Venice, which could be added to Toronto is Hong Sang-soo, who sticks with the cinematic formula that brought him success the last time he was on the Mediterranean. Announced several weeks ago, the prominent Korean film director’s new film “Oki’s Movie”, chosen as the closing film for the Horizon section of the Venice Film Festival, follows a concept similar to his film “Ha Ha Ha”—the grand prize winner of the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

The pic is made up of four parts and three main characters, and the film’s central character is a film student who makes a movie about an older and younger man she dated. When dating these men, she went to the same mountain with each of them—one year apart. The movie parallels each aspect of the trip to the mountain, comparing each experience, each place, each moment. 

His Cannes winner depicts two men — one a filmmaker and the other a film critic — recounting a trip to the same coastal town during a night of drinking. Both had gone with separate groups, to the same exact places, at the same exact time. The memory sequences, the time and place parallels, is how the characters and the audience piece together the importance of an ordinarily small moment in life.

“Oki’s Movie” stars Jeong Yu-Mi Lee Seon-gyoon, and Moon Seong-guen, both relatively low key drama actors. The film will be shown September 11, the last day of the festival.