Agony and Passion Hidden under the Skin – ‘Late Autumn (만추)’ (김태용, 2010) - Review
In the opening scene, we see a young woman, Anna (played by Tang Wei)
in a brown skirt, stumbling as she walks outside a house complex. She
looks as though she is dimly conscious with a touch a delirium in her
clumsy stance. The grey sky is unmistakably that of Seattle in late
autumn, but the scenery captured has a dreamy haze that feels somewhat
unrealistic. With the camera sliding ever so slowly and steadily, her
image gradually comes into focus. Soon we get to learn what might just
have happened; beaten and bruised all over her face, she appears
terrified and frustrated. She then turns around and starts running
toward her house. When she rushes into the house she finds her husband
lying dead on the floor.
These are the first few minutes of
Director Kim Tae Yong’s ‘Late Autumn’, a somber, moody romantic tale set
in the urban landscapes. The sequence (shot on a long track) sets the
tone and premise of the film vividly enough, but if you are an average
moviegoer expecting a high drama with a conventional storytelling you
might be baffled rather than pleased with what follows in the next 110
min.
For throughout much of the film’s course Kim relies heavily
on Tang Wei's silent acting and her facial expressions substituting much
of its dialogue with the visual elements. The director also makes a
good use of the Korean actor Hyunbin, who is playing the opposite male
character most handsomely and agreeably, eliciting awkward but timely
body language from him to punctuate with Tang Wei’s movements. By
today's standard, the pacing is slow and sometimes dangerously comes to a
stall, but it's completely in harmony with the mood and atmosphere Kim
sets out to create. As for the plot, it has a few genuinely creative
moments and pleasant surprises, such as when Anna confesses her dark
past in Chinese; although the man does not understand what she is saying
he acknowledges her with occasional ‘good’ or ‘bad’, the only two
Chinese words he picked up somewhere before.
From the purely
cinematic perspective, this is a sensitive but bold filmmaking at its
best. Film is, after all, a visual art and Kim seems to be fully aware
of the strength and limitation of his medium. There are moments abound
in ‘Late Autumn’ in which the two characters scarcely exchange a
conversation, but merely staring into each other, through the window, or
into the sky. And when they ever speak, they do so in two or three
different languages! Yet the film works beautifully because Anna's pain
and agony are visually and brilliantly conveyed in Tang Wei's quiet,
subtly passionate acting.
While I was watching ‘Late Autumn’,
time and again I was reminded of films of David Lean, Andrei Tarkovsky,
Stanley Kubrick, and Terrence Malick, all of whom more or less applied
the same technique in their films. In a typical David Lean epic, e.g.,
'Dr. Zhivago' or 'Ryan's Daughter', its profoundest message is carried
not by the dialogue but by the images and by juxtaposing them in a
manner that maximizes the visual impact.
One potential risk with
this approach is that the audience might think they are only watching
the actors walking or moving through the beautiful historical or - in
this case - striking urban backdrops without an engaging storytelling to
cling to. That is, it might give them a false impression that the movie
provides nothing but the empty theatrics. That Kim took such a risk and
the bold act of following the footsteps of these old masters is
something to treasure and give a compliment for.
The film also
confirms that Tang Wei is one of our finest actresses acting today; no
other actor can possibly match her intelligence and skill in portraying
the quiet yet thunderous passion hidden in her silent look and stare.
Unforgettable as she is, Tang Wei looks gorgeous and (dare I say?) cute
in Kim’s directing. The same thing goes to Hyunbin, whose exemplary
constraint and the suave, masculine charm shine in many scenes of the
film.
'Late Autumn' unfailingly reminds us that it's a grim thing
to go through the life crisis as painful as Anna's. But shouldn’t we be
thankful that there are a couple of gorgeous human beings still around
us in this world, giving us much pleasure and comfort? In this sense,
watching the film was both a touching and blessing experience indeed.
- 푸왕카레