Sal-gyeol (2007)

Director:

Seong-kang Lee

Writer:

Seong-kang Lee (writer)

Release Date:

10 May 2007 (South Korea)

Genre:

Romance

Cast

Bo-Yeong Choi
Myeong-su Choi
Yong-min Choi
Joo-ryeong Kim
Kwang-min Kim
Yoon-tae Kim
Dae-yeon Lee
Gye-nam Myeong
Ki-won Yoon

Also Known As:

Texture of Skin (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

South Korea:18 | Japan:R-18 | Singapore:R21 (cut)

Company:

East Film

Interesting ideas and visually strong, but a touch impenetrable.

Texture of Skin is a wholly unexpected departure in the filmography of Lee Seongkang, whose previous films were child-friendly, beautifully rendered animated films. What remains is the animator's eye for framing, color and composition, of which Texture of Skin has in spades. But this enigmatic hybrid ghost-story/romance is full of truly adult themes, including a running-time that's half-dominated by writhing naked bodies engaging in intercourse.

Honestly, I'm still trying to make sense of the story; there's a meaningful puzzle buried in there behind the events that compose the plot. It starts off with a pair of coincidences in the life of the male protagonist. He coincidentally runs into a former lover and after catching up briefly, she makes a deal with him to have an affair that lasts nine meetings. We also discover, the night before, he stumbles across an incident where a person, who was being chased, gets hit by a car and dies in front of him. Shortly thereafter, he moves into a new apartment whose previous tenant appears to showing up in his dreams. From there on, we discover more about the mysterious woman that lived in the apartment before as well as watch his doomed affair with his ex.

The story itself has a revelations in store as well a couple supporting stories involving the main character's job as a photojournalist and his relationship with his brother. That said, while I don't feel like the film is impenetrable, I am still left trying to fully understand the coherent threads between the ghost's story and the protagonist's story. I can sense that there's a relationship between the two, once that culminates in the final shot of the film, but I don't fully understand what his failed love story has to do with her own tragedy. Both the ghost's story and the protagonist's story has some compelling moments and I never really felt bored by the film. Instead, I was puzzled and wished that the film at least helped a little more in terms of connecting the dots, but perhaps I'm just slow.

Outside of a too-enigmatic story, the film is gorgeous. As I mentioned before, the composition, framing and use of color and lighting are fantastic. The apartment set is also quite beautiful too, almost becoming a character in itself. The actors all manage to pull off their parts and even in all the naked sexing that the leads had to do, I found the film less related to softcore pornography and more towards art film with lots of sex, with the sex shown managing to say something about their relationship; the longing for the past and the physical desire therein.

But, for all of its aesthetic strengths, I guess I'm disappointed that the film just doesn't offer enough in its story to make sense of why I was watching both the ghost's story and the protagonist's story--why him? Perhaps it's trying to point at the coincidental nature of life, but it doesn't seem to be hitting that note. This is definitely not a film for everyone, but for patient art-film lovers with minds like that like to look into the meanings of stories, this one will keep you puzzling... unless I'm just slow. I like it, but I also wish it were just a touch more accessible. 7/10.

A big note on the Korean DVD: the transfer is abysmal. Aside from blotchy blacks and frequent artifacting, the transfer also got terribly tinted towards green with any bit of black screaming greens everywhere, which really works against the intended colors of the film, at least in comparison with what little I've been able to read about the film's warm/amber tones in the theatrical presentation. There's nothing warm in the transfer--it's sickly enough to make you think you're watching the Matrix.