Blue Swallow (Cheong-yeon) is the dramatised story of Korea's first female aviator, played by Jang Jin-yeong. The movie is uneven in tone, with some rather poor direction and a somewhat inadequate script. It doesn't seem to know what kind of film it wants to be, which is a real pity - it has all the ingredients for a top class drama.
The story begins in her village early in the 1900's, where it's established that she is predictably downtrodden and ill-treated by her father. He wants to pull her out of school and put her to work; she argues that her life and education is just as important as a boy's. This must have been outrageous conduct for a little girl in turn of the century Korea, but not much is made of it, because suddenly, there she is in aviator training school as though it were the simplest thing in the world to accomplish. A brief mention over drinks of the four years of technical study it took to get herself there is woefully inadequate. In order to appreciate her journey, her struggles need to be shown more fully.
There seems to be little or no sexism, and she is treated the same as any other pilot. In fact, she consistently outdoes her male co-trainees, and they appear to accept her readily. This doesn't seem at all realistic, even in the context of a "boy's (girl's?) own" type of film such as this.
Later, however, she enters into an affair with a free-wheeling young man, played by Kim Joo-hyeok, and things take a very serious turn. All the dreamlike qualities of the first half disappear. The then current political situation with Japan is shown in quite graphic detail in some surprisingly grisly torture scenes (that wouldn't have been out of place in Old Boy), and the Japanese methods of manipulating public figures for political gain is portrayed quite effectively. This is really the first time that you are able to care for any of the characters, and though it comes a little late, it's a tribute to the actors that it's still enough to leave you with a sense of real loss and despair for them.
For all its flaws, it's still well worth seeing.
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