Come next month, South Korean auteurs will be leading a posse of Asian films selected to compete at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The 63rd edition of the biggest annual international film competition is set to roll out its red carpet on May 12 for a two-week engagement sure to offer plenty of the glitz and glam the festival has become known for.
This year, a host of filmmakers from Asia will be vying for the coveted top prize, the Palme d‘Or.
Of the nine productions from Asia, four will be from Korean directors. This includes Lee Chang-dong, who will be returning to the French Riviera with “Poetry,” starring ’60s screen icon Yoon Jung-hee.
The novelist-turned-filmmaker and former culture minister is no stranger to the event as he last competed in Cannes with “Secret Sunshine” in 2007.
Though Lee went home empty-handed that year, the film garnered leading actress Jeon Do-yeon with the Best Actress honors.
The 38-year-old screen siren will be crossing paths with Lee again this year as she is vying for another acting award with her leading role in Im Sang-soo’s remake of the 1960 classic, “The Housemaid.”
The vaunted actress has been called the “Queen of Cannes” since her win three years ago and in “The Housemaid,” Jeon revisits the carnal side she famously showed in the 1999 film, “Happy End.”
In her latest she plays the film’s title character, who begins a torrid sexual affair with her headmaster, played by heartthrob Lee Jung-jae.
Jeon, never one to shy away from on-screen nudity and sex, is sure to grab the attention of European and North American distributors as the film has been described as a racy thriller.
Lucky for her and Im, controversy has historically been an effective selling point for films from the Far East. Asian films making the rounds on the festival circuit have traditionally attracted buyers from companies which distribute films targeted at niche markets.
Films with graphic depictions of ultra-violence or the sexual objectification of its actresses have been known to attract a sizeable foreign audience from the West.
United States-based U.K. distribution house Tartan has over the past decade snatched up North American and British distribution rights to films by Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk, Hong Sang-soo, Kim Ji-woon and other Asian films that have fallen under such categories under their “Tartan Asia Extreme” banner.
With “The Housemaid” director Im Sang-soo, known for a bit of cage-rattling with topical films like “A Good Lawyer’s Wife” and “The President’s Last Bang,” local film experts say the film is likely to find foreign distribution during the competition.
Darcy Paquet, a local film critic and correspondent for Screen Daily International and industry trade magazine Variety, said the film’s “strong genre element as a thriller with great imagery and sexuality looks easy to market to foreign distributors.”
He adds that “Poetry” has already been sold to a French distributor and is set for a limited release there in August.
Joining the two heavy favorites among the invited is rising newcomer Jang Cheol-soo with his serial killer tale “Bedevilled,” which will be competing in the non-official International Critics’ Week competition.
Film festival stalwart Hong Sang-soo will be competing in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section with his latest yuppies-behaving-badly drama, “Ha Ha Ha.”
Moon So-ri (left) with co-star Kim Sang-kyung in writer-director Hong Sang-soo’s “Ha Ha Ha”
Hong’s film will be joined by Indian Vikramaditya Motwane’s directorial debut “Udaan”; Japanese director Hideo Nakata‘s English-language feature, “Chatroom,” filmed in the U.K.; Dutch director David Verbeek’s thriller “R U There,” filmed in Taiwan; and Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Chongqing Blues,” a film based on a true story about a father’s investigation into how his estranged son was killed by the police.
Also in Competition from Asia at Cannes this year is Takeshi Kitano with “Outrage,” the acclaimed Japanese actor-director’s return to gangster films, and Thai newcomer, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with his Spanish-German-French-British co-production “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”
The eight-member competition jury will be led by Tim Burton with one Asian member this year, Indian director-actor-producer Shekhar Kapur.
Last year, Korea’s Park Chan-wook took home his second award from Cannes, following up the directing honors in 2003 for “Oldboy” with the jury prize for “Thirst.”
