AFI Fest Report: Princess Aurora, Voice and Rule of Dating Capsule Reviews

Once again here is Peter Martin weighing in with quick looks at a trio of Korean films from this year's AFI Fest. Sounds like Rules of Dating is the winner of this particular trio.

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PRINCESS AURORA

Traffic delays caused me to miss the first 20 minutes of this 110-minute debut feature by actress turned director Bang Eun-Jin. You can read excerpts from two recent interview with her here.

The director calls her film a 'cruel melodrama,' which is a good description for what I saw. It's about a series of murders linked only by the killer leaving a "Princess Aurora" sticker at the crime scene. Princess Aurora is not a character I'm not familiar with, but what matters is that it's important to the killer. The visuals look properly gloomy, the murders unusual -- one unfortunate lecher has an unhappy encounter with a pair of scissors and a roll of
masking tape -- and the performances are fine. I missed too much of the story to make a fair judgment, but based on the evidence, it seems a flawed but ambitious film with a bit of a feminist agenda.

VOICE

All-girl high school. Two close friends. Whispers of 'the love that dare not speak its name' between a teacher and a student. The fourth installment in the WHIPERING CORRIDORS series -- I've only seen the second, the superb MEMENTO MORI -- VOICE isn't really scary or startling in any way.

It does make effective use of CGI to suggest that the high school is at a crossroads of more than one reality (or the collision of the hereafter with the here and now). One of the girls is killed early on, and only her friend can hear her. It's suggested that the surviving girl has to continue to talk to and listen to the dead girl so her memory will not be forgotten. But then another girl shows up, and we find out that still another girl haunts the place, and that the music teacher was involved with the haunting girl, and then I got too confused to keep up with the plot.

I wouldn't mind seeing this one again on DVD. I suspect it might hold up better on its own (rather than as the middle feature in the three films I saw in a row that day), but it feels awfully familiar with only a few new wrinkles to add to the high school horror canon.

RULES OF DATING

Eu-rim (Park Hae-il) hits on Hong (Kang Hye-jeong) on a park bench. He's so sexually crude, it seems like we're being set up for a broad comedy. Actually, though, we're being set up for an amazing journey through the lives and emotions of two people.

Eu-rim is a high school teacher and Hong is his slightly older new teaching assistant. Eu-rim relentlessly pursues Hong, even when he sees that she has a boyfriend. She resists his advances for as long as she can.

You really have to see this one without reading too much about the plot, because then you can be angered, exasperated, surprised, and, perhaps, moved like I was by the up-and-down antics of this relationship. Suffice it to say that it's not a typical romantic comedy. It delves deeply into the lives of two complex people. RULES OF DATING is not perfect, but it is provocative and daring. Co-written and directed by Han Jae-rim. Recommended; definitely worth checking out.

Reviews by Peter Martin.