Busan 2023 Review: GREEN NIGHT, Gloomy Feminist Noir Promises More Than It Delivers

Jin Xia (superstar Fan Bingbing), a Chinese woman working in the Seoul airport as a security guard, notices something off while patting down a vibrant green-haired girl (Lee Joo-young from Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker) – as she is exclusively known throughout the film and in the credits.

The latter ends up leaving barefoot, and the two bump into each other again soon, leading to a series of revelations, such as that the green-haired girl is indeed a drug mule, and Jin’s boss is actually aware of the whole operation. Most importantly, it soon becomes clear that despite their pretty opposing personalities, the two women have a lot in common: both are somewhat stuck depending on awful men in their lives; Jin on her abusive hypocrite of a husband whom she married for a legal status in South Korea, and the girl on her drug dealing boss. One thing leads to another, and soon Jin carries the green-haired agent of chaos on her scooter into the night, through the streets of Seoul, in pursuit of freedom.

Green Night is the second feature by Chinese director Han Shuai, following her debut Summer Blur, which premiered at Berlinale in 2020 and snatched the Generation KPlus Grand Prix. That was a coming-of-age story about a strongminded teenage girl dealing with an unwelcoming outer world. In Green Night, which also had its premiere in Berlin earlier this year and was just screened at the Busan film festival, the world is depicted as outright hostile.

The Seoul landscape here is decidedly bleak, with the only splash of color being Lee Joo-young’s heroine with her green hair, green nail polish and purple jacket. Fan’s character is, of course,  dressed in black as she eagerly follows her own personal green-haired Virgil into neon-noir territory with all the seedy bowling alleys, fish markets and luxury hotel rooms. All of this is visually striking, shot by cinematographers Matthias Delvaux (Old Beast) and Kim Hyun-seok (Poetry, A Girl at My Door), who balance the wide shots of the city with intimate closeups when the two protagonists are together in one frame. Han Shuai’s film actually has a lot going for it, and it’s a shame it ends up sort of crumbling under its own weight.

The topics explored -- economic migration, gender inequality, domestic violence and traumas of the past that are almost impossible to shake off -- should definitely resonate, and they do. The problem here is that the story, and the journey the heroines take, don’t really offer anything new beyond what’s expected, including the ending; it is a noir film, after all.

There are certain moments of wonderful unpredictability: the whole bowling alley sequence, the strategic use of the Christmas lights string, the suspense of a patting down that weirdly involves farting. But those are just that, moments, while the story itself unfolds checking all the usual boxes for the Thelma & Louise kind of narrative.

Both Fan Bingbing and Lee Joo-young are great in their roles, but the script strangely doesn’t allow the former much of a transformation. keeping it pretty much a one-note performance and making it harder to relate to the character. The same goes for the film: Green Night is just one of those pieces you desperately strive to love but end up mostly having a great deal of respect for it.