Fantasia 2010: A FROZEN FLOWER Review

Based on true historical events in the Goryeo Dynasty in the 14th century when the king and country were subjugated by the Yuan Dynasty (Mongol-China), with still a local (Korean) regent in place, the film follows the inner chambers of royalty during a very uncertain succession.  Wedded to a Yuan princes, the current King has been unable to produce an heir opening up the impending option to have Yuan assert a foreign monarch on the throne.  It is not because the King has medical problems, it is because he is in love with one of his royal guards, Hong Lim, one 36 elite royal trained from boyhood to protect and serve the King.  Not only is Hong Lim chief of the guard, he is serving the king in companionship, musically and sexually.  The Queen, ignored, stays out of affairs of state, and affairs of the bedroom.  That is until the King comes up with a plan to have his most trusted man serve (ahem!) his Queen to produce an heir.  That both Hong Lim and the Queen are virgins and that they both have a serious sexual awaking after the initial awkwardness.  The king starts to get jealous and suspicious of his lover proving the old adage, when you have a threesome, someone is going to walk away feeling inadequate.  The bi-sexuality, tastefully - yet explicitly, shown on camera makes in a mounting number of sex scenes makes this more than your average period drama, and is a fairly major step in Korean Cinema that seemed to avoid the controversy of Ang Lee's Lust Caution explicit hetero-scenes.  And the overall production design is top-shelf and far less gaudy than for instance Zhang Yimou's similar, yet inferior royal protocol and intrigue laden Curse of the Golden Flower.  

A scene of the King making music for his court and soldiers is particularly fascinating as it is opulent indicating an intimate relationship with his people, as they are all in one way or another bound by subjugation and protocol Likewise a royal picnic that erupts into sudden violence is quite evocative of the recent alternate history novels of Guy Gavriel Kay.  But central to the story is the emotion and actions of the three members of this bizarre love triangle.  The actors, particularly fair-skinned Jo In-seong (in his second collaboration with A Dirty Carnival Director Ha Ju) and Ju Jin-Mo (Musa) sell the complex web of trust, loyalty and love complicated by duty and authority that royalty and servant alike are ensnared.  The relationship of protocol to politics to emotions is laid out in a very visual and accessible fashion that makes this both a very astute film and a very entertaining one.  Unlike many excellent South Korean films, which astound in their ability to shift tone and genre within any given film, A Frozen Flower is tightly conceived as a building narrative to its earned climax.  There are no excisions into comedy or slapstick and moments of extreme violence are in keeping (I am guessing) with the nature of a Goryeo court.  Men sticking swords into one another, on the battlefield and off, might bear a little symbolic consideration as homosexuality and wire-fu sword play are married here as well...

Moments and situations are subtly foreshadowed and echoed with minor characters, but this is never ham-fisted or insulting to the audiences intelligence, except (alas!) the final sequence which spells something out at in painfully explicit fashion.  Despite the film making its loyalties and characters well known and articulated throughout the film, and a subtle shift in body language in the penultimate scene which would have been the perfect place to end, director Ha Yu makes only a single mistake in sentimentalizing.  Take out those forty-five seconds and you have a significant and important and above all entertaining as hell Korean Blockbuster that has not made its way across the pond, but should.