20131209: Comedy Review--The Art of Seduction

The Art of Seduction (Jakeob-ui jeongseok)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Korean live action feature length film, 2005, NR, 100 minutes, comedy, romance.  Spoken word is Korean, subtitles in English.
2. IMDB: 6.2/10.0 from 848 audience ratings. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 51% liked it from 1,132 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 63,977 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Ki-hwan Oh.
6. Starring: Song Il-guk as Seo Min-jun, Son Yi-jin as Han Ji-won, No Ju-Hyeon as Min-jun's father.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The male protagonist Min-jun, and the female protagonist Ji-won, are both manipulative, lying opportunists who use strangers for their own gains.  Judging from the first few minutes of the film, I would hope that both of them get the lengthy jail sentences that they so richly deserve. Neither of them succeeds by merit, unless one counts their skills in identifying the weaknesses of their targets and exploiting those weaknesses.  They are parasites who regularly commit felonies.


2. In early part of the narrative, we see the depredations of the pair as they act separately on their marks.  Eventually they meet one another.  She likes to ram stopped cars with single drivers then victimize the person she hit.  She pulls that on the male protagonist, and is surprised when he does not fall for her bovine scatology.  They lie to each other, then lie some more, then lie some more.  The music indicates that this is supposed to be humorous.


3. As the story continues, they have to deal with their previous targets.  They also get to like each other, even though they continue constructing plausible lies.


4. Do the protagonists get together and stay together?  Does one get the upper hand and crush the other?  Stay tuned (if you can stand it) to find out.




3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: An almost clever film glorifying the lives of grifters in Korea.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent with very few exceptions.


2. Sound: y/10 Moot, I suppose.  The voiced Korean seemed quite soft.  I had to trust the subtitles.


3. Acting: 5/10 More like mugging.  There must have been over 100 instances of 'oh, did that idiot believe me?'


4. Screenplay: 5/10 It is a story of (ethically) ugly people doing ugly things to people whom they hold in contempt.  When the protagonists get to know one another, they sharpen each other; that is, improve their 'A' game.  There is neither redemption nor punishment in this collection of vignettes about con artists.