NYAFF 09 Review: CRUSH AND BLUSH (Review Two)

[Our thanks to Charles Webb for the following review.]

It takes a bold actress to take a part like the one starlet Hyo-jin Kong inhabits in the wonderful Crush and Blush. It’s not just an “ugly” role because the actress is barely recognizable under makeup and a series of ticks and twitches. Her character Mi-sook Yang is profoundly unattractive because she has transformed herself over the years into a person who is so ground down by failure and disappointment that she insists to the world that being number 1 (and therefore success) is for suckers. And still, I wanted to spend a couple of hours with this character.

The title comes from Mi-sook’s chronic blushing which has made her face a near permanent orange (the original Korean title for the film was actually Ms. Carrot). She’s unpopular with the students at the girls’ middle school where she teaches English (poorly). Worse, she’s nearly invisible to her former teacher (and current coworker) Mr. Seo (Jong-hyeok Lee). Still, Mi-Sook is convinced that there’s a connection between her and the married instructor and she’s willing to stalk him until he gets the point.

Unfortunately, Mi-sook doesn’t that she has competition in the form of the pretty Russian-language instructor Yu-ri Lee played by Woo Seul Hye Hwang who is actually having an affair with Mr. Seo. But Mr. Seo’s misfit daughter Jong-hee (newcomer Seo Woo) does know and, fearing her parents’ getting a divorce, teams up with Mi-sook to end the affair.

What follows is a story where everyone shows just how selfish they can be and two outcasts find someone to be an outsider with. Written by Chan-wook Park and directed by first-timer Kyoung-mi Lee, the movie is very confident in front of and behind the camera. It trusts its characters to be messy, selfish, and at times, cruel. In between the lies, misdirection, infidelity, and plain stupidity in which the characters engage the script finds time to make them all human. At their core, they’re all people looking for love – whether it’s Mi-sook pining for a married man or Jong-hee just wanting to not be the only one on the outside looking in.

These two characters and the actresses who bring them to life are the reason this movie works so well. They walk a fine line between being utterly unlikeable and being loveable (simply by being human). There’s nuance in these performances, even when they’re getting up to screaming, wound-inducing hysterics. While the movie does have a small amount of slapstick, most of the comedy is based around these two characters and their brittle, bitter personalities. It’s almost like looking at a timeline seeing the two of them stand together – the elder locked in her bitterness and the younger on her way to ending up in the same place. It’s a buddy comedy and we would be disappointed if they didn’t grow to be best friends but we are fortunate to have them change each other in interesting ways during the course of the film.

A final note: I’ve mentioned the four characters who share the most screen time, but I haven’t mentioned the movie’s quiet secret, hanging in the background: Mrs. Seo, played by Eun-jin Bang. There comes a point in the story where she learns several secrets. She deals with them in an unexpected way and successfully draws the curtain closed on the plot. Her character is a belly dancer who teaches a class – it’s thematically appropriate given how her role in the outcome of the film requires equal parts balance and teaching.

Review by Charles Webb.