Kim Ki-Duk's BREATH UK DVD review

The idea of a troubled woman risking her marriage to visit a prisoner on death row suggests an insufferably weighty, serious drama, yet Kim Ki-Duk's Breath is much more than this. Admittedly it struggles to come to life; the arthouse veteran's fourteenth film gives every sign of being one of his intermittent misfires, hampered by intentionally obtuse scene-setting, frequent wordless passages and surreal, theatrical staging. But it does come to life. Breath is a painful, awkward movie, but a moving, captivating one for all that, quirky, distinctive, even genuinely funny.

Yeon (Park Ji-A) is drifting through what looks like a loveless marriage, stifled by a lack of communication and pain she can't articulate. Her husband can't understand why she's so obsessed with news reports on condemned prisoner Jang Jin (Taiwanese star Chang Chen, Red Cliff, Parking, Blood Brothers) but something about his frequent suicide attempts draws Yeon's attention.

When her husband's callous treatment drives her out of the house, she travels to the prison where Jang Jin is incarcerated and begs to be let in to visit him. Much to her surprise, she's allowed through the gates, after which a halting bond forms between the pair - both of them trying to deal with a fear of death and wondering what they have to live for.

While Breath trades in relatively straightforward symbolism (the subtexts are never less than obvious) and bold, overtly theatrical production design, the narrative isn't actually that didactic. Jang Jin never speaks - this is partly excused by his suicide attempts involving stabbing himself in the throat - and Yeon never explicitly reveals to anyone why she's there.

With every visit, she dresses their meeting room up in an attempt to show him one of the changing seasons outside. Each of these is a joy to watch, Park Ji-A singing guilelessly along to ancient karaoke tapes with cheap wallpaper tacked up behind her as Chang Chen's poker face slowly softens into a smile.

Breath is certainly a dark film, more so than the slightly clumsy opening might suggest - the closing set piece in particular is far more raw and emotionally powerful than the rather stilted initial confrontations between Yeon and her husband. But it is also openly, unselfconsciously funny.

The same showy, melodramatic gestures that floored Kim's earlier Time are tempered here by some beautifully deft touches of humanity, little screenwriting flourishes both emotive and comical. Jang Jin's cellmates are both scornful and oddly protective of him. Yeon is plainly torn between her attraction to the condemned man and her family, Park Ji-A's wordless grief encouraging far more empathy than Park Ji-Yeon's hysterical shrieking in the previous film.

It never completely manages to get the viewer to suspend their disbelief. Again, the opening feels more like an uncomfortable formality than it should - we establish Yeon's very upset, her husband doesn't understand her, and little else. The running gag to justify her being allowed into Jang Jin's presence comes off a little too much like an exaggerated wink towards the audience.

But ultimately Breath seems self-aware enough we can forgive these things, if not ignore them. Park Ji-A's vulnerability and Chang Chen's game performance in the face of both silliness and dangerous, unsettling intimacies sell the premise in the way monologuing at fever pitch never could have done.

And it manages an ultimately quite impressive story arc of quiet reflection, then action beneath the surface. Much of Breath's appeal lies in what both leads internalise and what even the symbolism doesn't spell out. The closing set piece (as winter draws near) is deceptively showy, with the bleakness of tone drawing associations with Kim's bad boy films. Yet the director lets the emotional heft come through surprisingly slowly and the climax is more the gentle, subtly affecting coda than the melodrama preceding it.

Breath is far from perfect, and perhaps less intelligent than Kim Ki-Duk would like to think, not to mention slower to start and more obtuse than it ought to be given the brief running time. But what seems like an overly formal, bloodless piece of performance art becomes a very earthy, warm and compassionate film, which though it might not dictate a message still has the potential to provoke lasting reflection on how we perceive mortality. At the same time, it's just playful and knowingly ridiculous enough to avoid ever seeming humourless.

The DVD:

Palisades Tartan's UK DVD of Breath gives the film a good presentation, though it's disappointingly bare bones. Like the director's earlier Time, the film is composed of fairly simplistic, DV-quality footage, but it still looks surprisingly attractive here, if occasionally a little too fuzzy. The menu is very simple - only offering twelve chapter stops and the choice of playing the film with subtitles or without - but it's attractively set out. Said subtitles are easy to read, with no noticeable errors of any kind.

The basic audio track is perfectly serviceable, though nothing out of the ordinary happens in the film beyond some raised voices and occasional screaming. Sound is perhaps moderately lo-fi, but it feels more like an artistic choice than a shortcoming. The cover lists 5.1 and 2.0, though neither the menus or Media Player Classic on a PC seem to offer any such choice. There are no extras on the DVD at all.

Like many stage plays, Breath requires some willingness on the part of the audience to let it take hold of them, but for those willing to overlook its occasional dips into cliché or predictability the film is far more powerful than the dour, heartless miserablism it briefly appears to be. Unsettling and disturbing yet warm, funny, moving and achingly human, Palisades Tartan's UK DVD is disappointing for its lack of extras but still presents the film well and comes definitely recommended.

(Thanks go to Palisades Tartan for facilitating this review.)