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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 19 April 2015
This article is a review of END OF WINTER.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)
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“I was so embarrassed at dinner, you should have backed me up,” Kang Hye-jeong (Lee Sang-hee)
Cheorwon, South Korea is the place of a thorny family drama. Location is particularly apt for a long weekend of domestic recriminations; it is on the border with North Korea, where military manoeuvres provide background aural accompaniment – from jet planes sonic booming overhead to ordnance tests shattering the silence. Character nerves on edge, from a permanent state of alertness as to bruised feelings, reflect a squaring off. Entertainment comes when verbal skirmishes interrupt the fragile ceasefires.
Cheorwon, South Korea is the place of a thorny family drama. Location is particularly apt for a long weekend of domestic recriminations; it is on the border with North Korea, where military manoeuvres provide background aural accompaniment – from jet planes sonic booming overhead to ordnance tests shattering the silence. Character nerves on edge, from a permanent state of alertness as to bruised feelings, reflect a squaring off. Entertainment comes when verbal skirmishes interrupt the fragile ceasefires.
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Nuclear family reunion catalyses around the retirement of the patriarch, Kim Sung-geun (Moon Chang-gil), from Cheorwon Technical High School. Almost mute, the extremely taciturn father, at the dinner, after his battleaxe wife, Yoon Yeo-jeong (Lee Yeong-ran), comments on his lack of popularity at the poor educational establishment turnout, says he wants a divorce. Out of nowhere, and so sudden, audience and players double take alike. Narrative cluster bomb sets END OF WINTER on its course.
Eldest son, Kim Dong-uk (Kim Min-hyeok), his wife Hye-jeong and younger brother, Kim Su-Hyun (Heo Je-wone), attempt to leave the town to return to their lives in avoidance of coming matriarch fallout. À la THE ICE HARVEST, they are trapped in town. Snow ensnares the Kims in a literally and metaphorically frosty landscape.
These are people you wouldn’t want to spend much time in the company of, the excruciatingly funny/awkward comes from the three days, two nights they have to with each other. Eldest son shares pater’s frustratingly emotionless, speechless persona – allowing much sympathy for their women. Instead of the harridan shrift of Yeo-jeong, daughter-in-law is an unhappy people pleaser who wants her hubby’s parents to lend them money for a beauty salon. Youngest son yearns for attention in exasperating vocal repetitions, and also needs money to begin his new life after impending nuptials.
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Reciprocated regard is in short supply. Snow, as director Kim Dae-hwan stated in the Q&A post-screening, is a symbolic metaphor for family: Surface is beautiful and peaceful, while underneath there is something else – greed and lack of understanding.
Stuck in Mr Kim’s allocated professional one bedroom dormitory, a tiny space, enhancing claustrophobia, means little respite is proffered. Passive aggressive loggerheads and denial are the watch-through-your-fingers tones. Lots of eating, where not speaking at meals is considered polite (which is frequently not adhered to), provides flimsy buffer and time drains for the cooped up. Sleep is no shield either. Gender separation has Hye-jeong suffer her mother-in-law’s hot flushes, while the youngest continues to yap to the unresponsive father and brother. 102 ill-at-ease minutes pass both effortlessly and tiringly.
Familial dysfunction can be winningly theatrical.
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