What do 80s synthpop legends A-Ha, Richard Linklater and a bunch of sexually perplexed, middle-class thirty-something Korean men have in common? Ah ha! Take on me, o mighty rotoscoping, because 그녀는 예뻤다 (Life is Cool). Wait. If you can read Korean that doesn't sound too kosher now, does it? Ah... those International titles, ruining decent puns.
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, watching Miyazaki Hayao's wonderful 崖の上のポニョ (Ponyo on the Cliff). That is, one of the reasons my anime phase pretty much died a most unbecoming death at the dawn of the new millennium was because it had mostly become a commercialized "genre," not just a production system with its own personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. Experiencing the joy and spontaneity of Miyazaki's youthful vibes splashing on the screen with such vigor despite all the fantasy was like visiting the child inside me after way too long, going way past simple target demographics and the commercial slant of "kids flicks." That is what animation too often lacks these days. Kon Satoshi's パーフェクトブルー (Perfect Blue) is a mere ten years old, but take another look and you'll penetrate those cells, find the pulsating, breathing vibe of real people behind the technical gimmicks, not just endless polygons or shades of crayon pastels trying to desperately "act" anime. That Philip K. Hitchcock-ian world mixed with Japanese pop culture was unique in the sense that it did have its "anime" moments, but also felt like a normal psychological thriller (an excellent one at that), live action realism tinted with the traditional vestiges of animation. A tasty crossover, if you will.
People asking me why, of all those great titles to choose from, my favorite Miyazaki is 紅の豚 (Porco Rosso), or why I consider the only Star Trek worth the film it was shot with to be Deep Space Nine, usually get a similar answer. That you can create worlds of your own, bask in the vacuum of difference such storytelling vectors bring to the table - because, Lee Myung-Se docet, even visuals are narrative tools. But at the end of the day, be it hand-drawn cells, historical dramas set two thousand years ago or weird aliens with latex masks who all happen to look like adults in pajama, you need to create a world which speaks to us in some way, a sort of parallel universe sharing the same human traits deep down. Way too often, anime tend to bask in their difference to make a buck, consciously creating a ghettocracy of sorts, pushing the same orientalist buttons certain darlings of the Festival circuit from the Asian continent seem to enjoy. Although Japan has enough tradition to offer the yin and yang of the entire animation world, this vicious circle is still very much alive for what concerns Korea. There's enough talent to bring the industry forward past mere technological advancement, but if the cultural approach doesn't change first, it will be of very little use.
Director Choi Ik-Hwan (or Equan Choe, if you like it with some fashion designer flavor) must have felt the same kind of pressure when dealing with his second feature Life is Cool. The film was part of a project started by CJ Entertainment two years ago, the same which brought us Ryu Seung-Wan's 짝패 (The City of Violence) and Park Chan-Wook's 싸이보그지만 괜찮아 (I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK). All three films would be shot in HD, cutting costs to around 2 billion won per picture, and trying to do something interesting with the medium. The reason why it took so long for Choi's creature to materialize didn't merely have to do with the laborious process of coloring live action scenes just like Linklater's Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly. It was the whole creed surrounding animation that made this a turtle among gazelles. The moment he presented the project, Choi started hearing complaints that there really was no need to use this technology for a story like this. That maybe he should have added some talking animals and cute sidekicks, if he really wanted to make it an animation feature.
That is still the prevailing attitude toward the medium in the country. The times when talented Korean animators would fill Hollywood productions through sub-contracts are mostly gone, for obvious reasons (you can find cheaper talent elsewhere, now), but one of the reasons animation or science-fiction can't find a foothold in Korea lies exactly in the psychological and cultural barrier the average Korean displays regarding such themes. Un-Disneify animation, like 아치와 씨팍 (Aachi & Ssipak) or 원더풀 데이즈 (Wonderful Days) did, or take off the space opera elements from SF just like the wonderful 나비 (Nabi: The Butterfly), and the masses will feel lost. That is because animation or SF aren't seen just as different shades of the same storytelling color, different ways to convey a similar theme. They're pigeonholed as the equivalent of cultural Sakoku (鎖国, country in chains), closed quarters which accept very little in the way of difference. Although things are changing around the world, the reaction Perfect Blue created among some western critics ("not anime enough") is more or less how certain Korean critics approached Life is Cool. It didn't feel "Linklater" enough for the critics and not "anime" enough for the masses. It was as if wasting time with such technicalities when the story was so simple felt like an useless exercise in style.
Then again, I tend to think this is one fine example of the potential animation could have in Korea, if they dropped the BS and started educating people through diversity (importing something other than Disney, Ghibli and Pixar would be a decent start). The idea is simple: three thirty-something men and their different approach to romance, with the same woman. Take the script at face value, and it would look like something out of a 드라마시티 (Dramacity) from its prime (2005~07). Story is quite convoluted and often unnecessarily connected, but there's a certain charming something in between, slices of life that echo through the storytelling, with some ambitious moments of satire and/or social commentary. It doesn't always work, and the premise itself is rather cliched (how many "Korean men in their 30s, The Untold Story" have we seen in the last ten years?). But, then again, the fact this is animation and not simple live action works in some ways like the black and white in Hong Sang-Soo's 오! 수정 (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors). If the 2000 film stripped color to force our focus back to the characters, this film takes off a lot of the emotional details the inquisitive HD cameras would have revealed, and strengthens its theme with those different shades of animation.
Such move allows you to focus a lot more on the storytelling structure of the film. Tae-Young (Kang Sung-Jin) lives in the past, dominating his present; Il-Kwon (Kim Soo-Ro) is very much obsessed with the present, regardless of the time past or what's to come, while Sung-Hoon (Kim Jin-Soo) spends his time fantasizing about a future that will never come, influencing his present. The wounds of recollection, realistic pragmatism, and romantic imagination partake in this social pastiche about men's first real signs of adulthood, while the "muse" in the middle, Yeon-Woo (Park Ye-Jin) becomes a sort of ghostly, tangential presence, an element used to direct the chemicals of character development to reach a certain statement. If we had been dealing with live-action, the shortcomings of Yeon-Woo's arc would have certainly been much more explicit, just as the fine emotional details we'd experience thanks to the actors would have driven us off the path. It's a character-driven drama all right, but the characters are used to make a statement more than anything, which is why animation works. Particularly the last scene, with all the characters dancing a waltz together which echoes their emotional state of mind, strengthens those statements even more.
There's even a certain autobiographical vein in the film. Choi said he used one of his friends' story as the base for the film, but the trait d'union between all characters, them being connected to English in some way (one is a field interpreter for a basketball coach, another teaches English at a cram school, and so on), reminds of his start in the business. Choi had quite an interesting career, as he entered the film academy in 1994 along with Bong Joon-Ho and Jang Jun-Hwan, but unlike them he started from scratch. He actually planned to become a TV producer, but eventually moved to film, which allowed him to gain precious lessons working under cinematographers and directors. For instance, he was assistant director in 1998's 여고괴담 (Whispering Corridors), and also helped Im Soon-Rye on her great debut 세 친구 (Three Friends). The experience was probably enough for him to debut, particularly as Chungmuro was quickly becoming a mature film industry. But he packed his bags and moved to the US, gaining a MFA in filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. Why English is so prominent in the film exactly comes down to the fact Choi went from set to set building experience, sometimes using his English skills on the set, such as when he worked with Christopher Doyle on Park Gi-Yong's 1997 film 모텔선인장 (Motel Cactus).
After some acclaimed shorts, including the delirious 나는 왜 권투심판이 되려하는가? (Why Do I Want to be a Boxing Referee?) where he first met Kim Soo-Ro, Choi began preparing for his feature debut, the fourth chapter in the successful High School Horror series, 2004's 목소리 (Voice). His starting with horror is telling, because despite being one of the many debut directors knocking at the door through a genre they weren't too interested in to begin with (the very profitable and relatively low cost horror projects), he actually created something that had a "voice" of its own. The series itself is best remembered for being one of the country's best venues for discovering young and talented actresses (this one alone had Seo Ji-Hye, Kim Ok-Bin, Cha Ye-Ryeon and Han Hyo-Joo), but Voice is also one of the few Korean horror films of the last ten years with something to say, other than the fact Sadako has chronic back spasms, only one article of clothing, and 365 bad hair days per year. Choi used sound and its absence as much more than just cheap thrills added for visceral effect. It felt like a second character, highlighting the loss of identity and communication just as the characters were "losing" their voice.
That he started with horror despite not being particularly fond of the genre is telling exactly because the same thing happens with Life is Cool. Choi didn't really start this project trying to carve a story within the animation world, he did the opposite: this production style, the same rotoscoping of Linklater's films to be precise, was the best gateway to express what he needed, hence he experimented with the medium. When I say experimented, I really mean that. You can sense a certain evolution of the "genre" going from Waking Life to A Scanner Darkly, but Life is Cool is all over the place. 14 different styles were used for the film, from the A Scanner Darkly-like hyper-realistic one to much less vivid, rougher and less detailed ones. It's not just throwing different styles at the wall hoping they'd stick: quiet, introspective scenes which focus on minute facial expressions are almost frighteningly photorealistic (although when you're as beautiful as Park Ye-Jin, there aren't too many "imperfections" needed to begin with). Other scenes when theatrics play a bigger part tend to obsess a lot more on the background and body language of the characters, and there's even instances of live action barely highlighted with animation, along with a few very satirical touches, such as an hilarious reference to 올드보이 (Oldboy) and a few other films.
Sure, the film says nothing new, but it uses the medium to tell a familiar story in a refreshing way, which is exactly what something like animation is good for. It's not just a technical achievement, the Korean equivalent of Waking Life. It actually uses the gimmick in ways which help the final product behind superficial luster, and that is what makes the film's message echo when the novelty of the rotoscoping wears off. Life is Cool predictably didn't do well at the box office, but it both represents a very meaningful experiment in giving a human voice to what's become a lifeless "genre" product in Chungmuro, and proves once again Choi Ik-Hwan is a very promising talent. Maybe it won't be enough for those looking for talking lobsters and preppy twelve year old heroines, but it's "cool" enough for me....
RATING: 7.5
그녀는 예뻤다 (Life is Cool)
Director: 최익환 (Choi Ik-Hwan)
Animation Director: 최승원 (Choi Seung-Won)
Screenplay: 최익환 (Choi Ik-Hwan), 이은경 (Lee Eun-Kyung)
D.P.: 신경원 (Shin Kyung-Won), 김영삼 (Kim Young-Sam), 최병준 (Choi Byung-Joon)
Music: 정재일 (Jung Jae-Il)
Produced by: DNA Production
Int'l Sales: CJ Entertainment
95 Minutes, 35mm 2.35:1, Color
Release: 6/12/2008
CAST: 김수로 (Kim Soo-Ro), 박예진 (Park Ye-Jin), 강성진 (Kang Sung-Jin), 김진수 (Kim Jin-Soo), 김뢰하 (Kim Roi-Ha), 이채영 (Lee Chae-Young), Kamil Ward, 이영미 (Lee Young-Mi), 이승민 (Lee Seung-Min)