Jae-un Lee -Yu-na
Ki-yeon Kim -Sang-hui
Hyeong-chul Kim -Yeong-gu
Directed by: Yu-Min Kim

The premise of the Korean erotic thriller Yellow Hair is patently ridiculous. A sad-sack salaryman has a chance encounter with a pair of Cyndi Lauper blonde, sexually-aggressive teens with a Single Korean Female -ish homoerotic dynamic between themselves who are inexplicably eager take him to their spacious, comfortable, computer-equipped squat so that they may fuck the shit out of him. So, given all this, why does Yellow Hair work better than the vast majority of the mainstream, never mind erotic, movies I've seen this year? Energy, for a start. The movie chugs along furiously from it's first scene and never really takes enough of a breather for the viewer to reflect on the absurdity of it's particulars (at least not as the film is ongoing, and somehow, after it's finished, these things seem less than significant).

The opening scenes quickly foreshadow that this is not a story that will end unhappily, as well as simultaneously establishing Sang-hui's (evidently) unrequited feelings for her best friend. Sang-hui spends much of the earlier scenes of the movie, before being sucked into the bedroom, sulking outside the bedroom. Visibly resentful, and swallowing it all whole, of the new occupation of Yu-na's time, Sang will suffer in silence, or join in as directed by Yu-na because she can see nothing past the object of her affections and would sooner take a peripheral role in her life than risk being alienated from her. Meanwhile, the two major sex scenes between Yu-na and Yeong-gu have a startling immediacy and intimacy about them. These are not the glossy fantasies of the King/Lyne school, but rather an urgency and emotional rawness one might hope (but really shouldn't expect to find) to find in a particularly well-shot amateur porn tape (or maybe hidden camera porn, so authentic are Lee and Kim's performance). The first of the two scenes, in particular, had me seriously wondering if what I was seeing was actually simulated sex or not, so intense and unaffected were the actors performances (and, boy, what I wouldn't give to see behavior like this on a hardcore disc now and then).

One brief scene on this disc (literally a matter of seconds) has been blurred to obscure genitalia/pubic hair, as is common in many Asian countries. IMDb.com doesn't list the films original runtime (prior to submission to, and subsequent rejection by, the Korean Performing Arts Promotion Committee, resulting in the effective banning of the film from theatrical presentation), but I suspect this scene in question, the controversial (in Korea, anyhow) three-way, has also been, as it appears on this DVD, severely cut. It should also be noted that the only DVD (and the VCD) currently available contains no English subtitles, which is actually less of a problem than it may sound, since most of the plot information in the film is communicated non-verbally. The fine folks at the City on Fire website (read their review of Yellow Hair here) provided me with a word document of an English translation of the script (which prints out at a whopping six pages) and I, in turn, have made it available online here, for those interested in the movie. Perhaps one day an enterprising US company (Fantoma, Media Blasters or Anchor Bay would be ideal) will take on the task of releasing this jem uncut and non-Korean speaking person friendly, but for right now, I have no reason to expect that to happen.

As the plot thickens we learn of Yeong's office girlfriend, to whom he seems bound to eventually return, a fact, which is bound to make the increasingly insane Yu-na, particularly coming on the heels of aborting his child, none to happy. Jae-un Lee gives a impressively credible and controlled performance in portraying the increasing agitation and hysteria of Yu-na, a character like this, unstable and theatrical (and such a contrast to the seemingly mousy bank teller she played in Jakarta), can take the best actor over the top, but Lee hits the right note and really sticks to it all the way through, even as the events become more and more exaggerated. Her commitment to this character is really the anchor of this movie. An underdeveloped subplot involving Yu's gambling and an outstanding debt to some shady characters leads nowhere.

Responding to the uproar that greeted this film's release, director Yu-min Kim has advanced the notion that this movie is intended as a social criticism of Korean culture and the plight of street kids in the same, a kind of wet, naked and horny version of The400 Blows, if you will. And while the class consciousness of the piece is overt (despite the girls visibly encountering little or no hardship that could credibly be blamed on the society, in every case a result of their mental illness and self-sabotage, in fact, for two unemployable psychotic nymphomaniacs, they're living in awfully comfortable circumstances), it's roots in classic exploitation pulp-cinema (during the movie's jaw-droppingly audacious third act, all I could do was chant the words Jack Hill, Jack Hill, Jack Hill, ad nauseam to myself, in other words, as a lost youth themed message film, this has more in common with Switchblade Sisters than with the Truffaut classic) run far too deep to really support such highbrow instincts. But if your tastes run toward cute yet punky twin Korean teen girls with vividly blonde hair in memorably erotic sex scenes, and would like an involving story for it to all go down in, this is your movie.

In spite of some of the reservations this edition may cause, if any of the above sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend it.

DVD available here

Cheaper VCD here

Movie Rating: 8.5/10
Picture: Above average, one shower scene was notably washed-out looking, but overall the color were vivid and the picture pretty sharp. The movie is presented full-frame, I'm unaware if this is OAR or not. 7/10
Sound: DD 5.1, also just above average, a little crackling in the right channel during an early bar scene, other than that, little to complain about

Edited by - ultradamno on Apr 24 2003

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