Gwanneungui Bubchik (2014) Reviews

• Clitorisu! Viagura! And friendship withstanding the trials of life

  rogercilantro2015-04-18

  A movie about 3 friends, whose cores of issues orbit around relationships, dealt with a touch of humor here and there, while life complicates things. I don't think it passes the Bechdel test though other than a couple of minutes, each woman also mentions a man, whatever they go through. Jeong-hwa Eom/Jung Shin-Hye is a station chief, whose professionality is thrown away after a 5 years relationship ends, in a public meltdown (is this big in South Korea? Ceasing to function in public is a recurring theme). At least it was out of the office, although, hers is a complex role (her friends will get their own dept later in the movie): producing softcore pool videos, dealing with male coworkers also being emotional, dealing with male coworkers using her. It's up to actual women to judge it as well or bad handled. Anyway, it leads with a new relationship with a younger man (beefcake Jae-yoon Lee), her thing to deal with in this movie. Min-soo Jo/Lee Hae-Young a mother whose daughter keeps getting in the way of enjoying her new partner. So-ri Moon/Jo Mi-Yeon is a wife whose husband (the very stressed Kyeong-yeong Lee) can't keep up with her libido, and experiences a crisis regarding his expected masculinity. I was surprised by how upfront this was about sex, but I guess given the maturity of the circle of women involved, it was natural. It comes and goes. It's fun to watch the lenght they go to hide nipples in sex scenes, but the director made good use of all that was left possible. The editing at times is too fast, for example jumping from actress to actress during brunches, and it clashes with the long wide angles scenes in other segments. The sets were generally nice, posh, and a nice food photography. There's an element of women magazines photography to the backgrounds.

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