Forgot password

 

Three Korean films that recently released in Japan’s theaters are attracting considerable attention among the local audience. These films are Asura : The City of Madness (March 4th), The Handmaiden (March 8th) and THE WAILING (March 11th) in the order of local release dates. 

These films never had the luxury of a wide release or topping the local box office. Asura : The City of Madness started out in just one theater in Tokyo. The Handmaiden raked in USD 310,000 during a course of 18 days, while THE WAILING earned USD 230,000 in 10 days. 

Nevertheless these films, with the help of favorable celebrity reviews and film fan-based viral networks, seem to be setting a new precedent in the Japanese film industry. User rating scores on major portal sites such as Yahoo Japan and eiga.com showed an average of more than 3.5-stars among a 5-star scale for all three films. And subsequently, The Handmaiden was able to secure additional theaters as of April 8th. Japan’s Oricon on March 24th claimed that the popularity of these films known as the ‘Three Korean Film Noirs of the Spring 2017 lineup’ among film buffs can be attributed to the fact that Korean films have been satisfying Japan’s demand for “films that can be enjoyed by the adult audience.” 

Filmmaker NA Hong-jin’s THE WAILING was the first among the three films to make headlines. According to Oricon, Japanese actor KUNIMURA Jun who co-starred in the film gave the Japanese media the chance to shed new light on Korean cinema when he became the first foreigner to win the Best Supporting Actor Award at Korea’s Blue Dragon Awards last year. 

Furthermore, the high-end strategy implemented by the Japanese PR company of THE WAILING hit the mark. They succeeded in raising the film’s appeal to movie buffs by including favorable reviews from Japanese specialists such as famous authors, filmmakers, acting talents and professors in the film’s official website. 

Actor YAKUSHO Koji stated he was “envious of the vibrant and unrestricted production environment” in THE WAILING, while the remark from filmmaker SHIRAISHI Kazuya, “It makes me get the shivers at the thought of NA Hong-jin’s previous two films serving as the springboard for this film” was placed forward as the film’s main commentary.

The film’s indefinable plot fueled its popular attraction even more. In a special article, eiga.com confessed the film is the “best thriller that paralyzes all of film experience or knowledge one already had. It presents a genre that doesn’t fit into any category we’ve been accustomed to.”

 

Before its Japanese release, filmmaker KIM Sung-soo’s Asura : The City of Madness was marketed as the Korean version of KITANO Takeshi’s hard-boiled gangster flick, Outrage. It seems that despite the differing storyline, the reason for using this type of comparison was a strategic move to appeal to the younger Japanese audience.

Asura : The City of Madness is a crime film that best suits the ‘Korean Film Noir’ genre among the above mentioned three films. And the main audience for this type of genre is the Japanese male audiences in their 40-60s who are nostalgic for the popular Battles Without Honor and Humanity series of yakuza films, and IMAMURA Shohei’s Vengeance is Mine in 1960-70s.

According to Oricon, the current Japanese film industry is focusing on feature adaptations of popular youth mangas or school films based on romance mangas that target the younger audience. As the Japanese film industry’s lack of satisfying the adult crowd’s need for ‘intense films’, the audience turned their attention to Korean Noirs. 

But it seems the three Korean Noirs have succeeded in absorbing a new type of audience during the first-half of the spring 2017. The audience age group for THE WAILING broadly stretches from the 20s to the 60s which also includes a considerable portion of the female audience. Asura : The City of Madness has managed to attract quite a number of the younger audience and the married “Hallyu” (Korean Wave) female fans by casting two Hallyu stars, JUNG Woo-sung and JU Ji-hoon.

An eiga.com user reviewer posted a rave review stating “Most Korean crime films are loaded with tinderbox-like tension, but this film takes this to a 2-3 times more condensed level which lasts for more than 2 hours. Without exaggerating, I believe actor HWANG Jung-min has updated the film villain since the Joker in The Dark Knight.” 

 

The Handmaiden directed by PARK Chan-wook, who is considered one of the masters of contemporary Asian cinema, quite actively incorporates favorable reviews from a number of professionals who are the best in their field into the film’s marketing approach. 

Playwright KUDO Kankuro praised that “There is no other film director as he (PARK)” and video game designer KOJIMA Hideo ranked the film as “the birth of a new PARK Chan-wook-style noir.” Adding to this, unlike PARK’s two previous films which had more male audience-appeal, The Handmaiden generated comments from noted public female figures as well. 

Especially, considerable praise was directed at the erotic depiction from a woman’s point-of-view. Actress MAKI Yoko pointed out that “If the film was made in Japan, there may have been a more intense exploration of eroticism which could have driven the female audience away. The superb balance we see in the way PARK shoots the film releases you of any resistance.”

Another reason why this film attracted attention in Japan is the fact that the film is set in Joseon under Japanese colonial rule, and has an extensive amount of Japanese dialogue in it. 

There are mixed opinions on the Japanese lines delivered by the Korean actors. Filmmaker MARIKO Tetsuya states, “As a Japanese, the film does give one a slight sense of alienation, but even this is overcome through directorial skills, setting off a humoresque tone to it,” while actress MAKI Yoko argues that “The Japanese in the film isn’t a problem, and the film itself without a single doubt transcends this.” 

To this, film critic SEITO Hideto points out that “The powerful aspect of The Handmaiden is that it's Joseon, but it is not Joseon, it is Japan, but then it isn’t. Then again, it’s not another country, and its mysterious setting, costumes and language put an end to any possibility for argument,” referring to the film’s rather ambiguous national identity as the very point that makes The Handmaiden more impressive.

Oricon predicts that such popularity of the Korean Noir will continue onto The Age of Shadows and TRAIN TO BUSAN, both scheduled for theatrical releases in Japan. Like THE WAILING, the local Japanese media is focusing on the fact that Japanese actor TSURUMI Shingo is in the cast of KIM Jee-woon’s The Age of Shadows.