“Woman in the Mist” by Park Chan-wook
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The body of an entrepreneur is found at the foot of a rock in Busan. With every indication that he crashed and there is no suspicion of murder, Detective Haejoon (Park Hae-il) is urged to close the case and turn to the seething underworld of the South Korean port city. But Haejoon follows his intuition, questions the dead man’s young widow, who seems strangely uninvolved.
Plagued by insomnia, he begins observing the beautiful Seo-rae (Tang Wei) and gets caught up in a whirlpool of curiosity, fascination and attraction. Again and again he imagines himself at her side to look for gaps in her alibi. But his skepticism soon gives way to concern for the young woman. He takes care of her, cooks for her and explains his investigative methods to her on evenings together; then she lets him rest in her arms.
When he’s convinced the man died in a tragic accident, he stumbles upon a tiny detail that chills him to the core. Entangled in his feelings, he lets Seo-rae go and starts afresh in the provinces. But then reality catches up with him. Another man dies, and soon the inspector finds himself face to face with the seductive Chinese woman he once gave a second chance.
Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”, “I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK”) manages to surprise audiences again in his Cannes director’s award-winning thriller. In The Woman in the Mist, the South Korean master of revenge cinema uses subtle means to tell the gripping story of two loners who struggle with loss and loneliness. With the precise arrangement of the elements in the crooked plot, virtuoso camera perspectives and precisely crafted dialogues, Park explores the complicated emotional worlds of his complex characters. And he proves once again that there is nothing more exciting than human abysses.
By Thomas Hummitzsch
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