Bedevilled by Cheol-soo Jang

Undoubtedly, Korean cinema has the power to make you dig into your deepest feelings, and hardly the easy ones. Those that make human beings come back to their animal roots, or even lower. With Bedevilled, we feel uncomfortable from beginning to end. Switching from drama to horror with no strict transition, Cheol-soo unseats his audience continuously, in the most delightful way.

He seems to take a vicious pleasure in playing with our nerves - and with our points of reference when it comes to investing ourselves in a character. Indeed, at first sight Hae-won (Ji Seo Sung-won) is a one-dimensional Seoul businesswoman, selfish and cold, who refuses to get involved in anything not concerning herself. The film starts with an explicit scene which reveals Hae-won’s lack of humanity. As a direct witness of a deadly street aggression, she declines to cooperate with the police to testify against the obvious murderer.

Hae-won is the total opposite of Bok-nam (Seo Young-hee), a friend from her childhood who lives on an isolated and under-developed island. She is tenderly pitiful, having been the sex toy of the men and the hard labourer for the women her entire life. The only things that keep her alive are her daughter and the hope of escaping her prison-like existence. Maybe Hae-won would help them out, if only she answered her phone calls or letters…

Those two characters seem to have nothing in common. However, Cheol-soo juggles their two radically different natures, leading them to extreme fusion in perfect insanity. It’s quite an accomplishment that we totally understand how things got so bad. It could sound rough, but when the gory violence finally arrives it comes as a relief. The catharsis works perfectly – no doubt that mothers in the audience will feel even more revolted, and yet alleviated, at the outcome.

Aesthetically, Cheol-soo adopts a contemplative style. Everything is arranged to take in the plain violence of the atmosphere, which grows slowly over time. Nature is beautiful, humans are evil: this is what the photography successfully enhances, in a totally dramatic style. After some uncertainty about where the storyline would lead, and a few reservations about the purpose of the first twenty minutes, in the end everything makes perfect sense. Bedevilled boasts a continuously surprising script and an allegorical conclusion that make it outstanding.

By Olivier Croughs