[2006 KOREAN CINEMA PREVIEWS] Kim Hae-Gon's 보고싶은 얼굴 (The Face I Miss)

The best films of this revival had almost always something in common, a great script. One of those little gems was 2001's 파이란 (Failan), a weird, hypnotically charming mix of Shinpa tropes and the gritty world of third rate gangsters. But the fact Song Hae-Sung -- a talented director yes, but after all someone who directed the horrible 카라 (Calla) before, and managed to burst the bubble of one of the most colossal disappointment of the last 5 years, 역도산 (Rikidozan: A Hero Extraordinary) -- directed it makes you think. Where did all that force come from, that striking dialogue, those incredibly powerful scenes, feeling real even if immersed in a sea of apparent predictability. Hell, even that scene where Choi Min-Shik pisses in the kitchen sink... where did all that come from? From the pen of one of Chungmuro's most unique 'childs': Kim Hae-Gon.

They say looks can deceive, but that's just for those who judge people based on 'proper' etiquette. Kim Hae-Gon has built a reputation as one of the wildest interviews in Chungmuro, swearing like a storm, never afraid of saying what he feels, sometimes at the cost of a few headaches and lots of misunderstandings. Kim's wildness might be an acquired taste, but that speaks more about the man's honesty in everything he does. Kim was different right from his youth, when while attending high school he entered a theater group which led him to become one of the shiniest lights in Korean theater during the 80s. At the young age of 20, he was already writing stage plays, like 1984's 행군하는 분신 (Marching Alter Ego), for which he won Best Director, Best Adaptation and Best Actor.

That prize in the mid 80s started creating a reputation for the young Kim, who only joined theater with his friends as a fun way to pay his tuition. After several plays in the mid-to-late 80s, Kim finally decided to try his hand in the film business. Auditions for Im Kwon-Taek's 장군의 아들 (The General's Son), a 1990 action drama about the life of legendary Kim Doo-Han, whose popularity continued for its two following sequels, were open. Kim entered Chungmuro just for fun, exactly the same way he entered theater, but that year he met people who would become friends for life. Out of those auditions came the leads for Im's film: Shin Hyun-Joon, Kim Seung-Woo, Lee Il-Jae, Park Sang-Min, and obviously our 'swearing machine'. Enter Kim Hae-Gon, the actor.

Kim the actor is not too distant from real life, it seems. His characters almost always have a very quirky side of their personality, and of course they don't go easy on the swearing. Kim spent the first half of the 90s working for Taeheung Pictures alongside his 'audition comrades' Kim Seung-Woo and Shin Hyun-Joon, continuing his collaboration with director Im Kwon-Taek in the other two parts of the 'General's Son' trilogy, after which he starred in two of the most important films of the mid 90s: 게임의 법칙 (Rules of the Game) was one of the few Korean noir with an identity of their own, and the glorious 1995 comedy 개같은 날의 오후 (A Hot Roof) managed to be intelligent, a lot less patriarchal than most commercials films in Chungmuro back then, and side splittingly hilarious. Kim developed a friendship with director Jang Hyun-Soo, who would later cast him in the comedy 라이방 (Raybang) in one of his most important roles to date. From the taxi driver in 'Calla' to the sneaky Room Salon owner in 굳세어라 금순아 (Saving My Hubby), from the oblivious husband in 누구나 비밀은 있다 (Everyone Has Secrets) to the merciless General in 태극기 휘날리며 (Taegukgi), Kim rarely had much weight to deal with, but he always left a mark with his unique characters and the way he portrayed them.

One just need to look at how much better the (very dark) comedy in Kim Ji-Woon's 달콤한 인생 (A Bittersweet Life) is thanks to his hilarious role, but that persona hides Kim's real profession in Chungmuro: one of the best paid, most respected writers in the industry. He wrote the script for 'Failan', yes, but he also helped write several scripts (or at least parts of them), from 청풍명월 (Sword in the Moon) to 블루 (Blue), 이것이 법이다 (Out of Justice), and the upcoming action film 조선의 주먹 (The Fist of Joseon), about the life of the legendary Sirasoni. But although those films had a life of their own, that respect came mostly from something Kim wrote in 1998, something he won an important contest for. It was a script called 보고싶은 얼굴 (The Face I Miss). Why did Kim have to wait 7 long years to make a film out of it? Back then working as a writer in Chungmuro wasn't easy, and he changed 7-8 companies before finding someone willing to invest in this project. But he held onto it, as it was his first ever script, something people like Moon Sung-Geun, Choi Min-Shik and Director Lee Chang-Dong recognized as one of the best scripts of the late 90s, and encouraged him to keep fighting for it.

The problem, of course, was that this wasn't the type of film which tends to make money. And that's just about everywhere, not only Chungmuro. Everyone was telling him the 'book' (slang for script in the industry) was great, but it wasn't going to make money, it was that kind of 'art film' people don't see, regardless of who's making it, or starring in it. Cha Seung-Jae, president of Sidus FNH and someone with impeccable taste, told him he saw that script more as literature than something which could be effectively translated into a film. But even when nobody wanted to allow him to make his debut as a director, he had two little cards to play. One was Kim Seung-Woo, who has been friends with Director Kim for almost 20 years. The two pretty much act like brothers even in public, and in a way this was the actor's way of paying back all the help and support he got from Director Kim. The other was Jang Jin-Young, one of the two-three most talented actress of her generation, and someone willing to risk when the project is right -- she spent 15 months on Yoon Jong-Chan's 청연 (Blue Swallow), focusing only on that film. Right after reading the script, Jang accepted the role with enthusiasm, saying it was the best script she had read up to that point. That's where the story of 보고싶은 얼굴 (The Face I Miss), which will mark the debut of Kim Hae-Gon as director, finally began.

Young-Woon (Kim Seung-Woo), an insecure son of a shabby restaurant owner, is engaged to a woman he'd never want to marry. His mother already prepared the perfect marriage, which will finally open a life of comfort for them, after years of struggling, but he falls for Yeon-Ah (Jang Jin-Young), a Room Salon hostess. Their days as a couple are numbered, but they spend the time until his marriage like real lovers. And at the end, just like the title says, what will be left is the memories, their faces, those faces they'll miss. Production was going to be difficult from the beginning, as both Jang and Kim knew what they were getting into, but it's not exactly easy to go from big blockbusters and romantic comedies to a 'glorified art film' like this one. Kim faced many problems with investors before settling down with Good Player, who will produce the film.

When he got a good enough cast to make his project look a little more palatable, investors started complaining that with those actors they could have made something 'worth investing' (read: commercial), not the fruit of the director's masturbatory artistic intents. So Kim brought in Kim Seung-Woo, Jang Jin-Young, Oh Dal-Soo, Kim Sang-Ho and Tak Jae-Hoon, quite an impressive line-up for a little film like this. Yet, even with that cast, people would just refuse to invest in this. 'The Face I Miss' started shooting in Busan without a firm financial structure in place (but it was later solved by Kim Jung-Soo of Good Player, who managed to raise the 3 Billion Won budget at the last minute), and Kim used friends from past productions as staff, including DP Choi Ji-Yeol from 'Rules of the Game', Lighting Director Im Jae-Guk from 깊 은 슬픔 (Deep Blue) and more.

And it finally started shooting (and wrapped up a few weeks ago), and if Kim was able to get that energy Kim Seung-Woo displays in his comedies for this more dramatic role, and if even 1/3 of Jang Jin-Young's immense talent emerged with this role, we might be dealing with one of the best films of 2006, as the buzz about its script has been raging all over Chungmuro ever since it was written, over 7 years ago. Director Kim sat down with Cine21, and talked about several anecdotes from the film, in his unmistakably frank style. Although I tried to take off as many swear words as possible, sometimes it's just impossible if you want to maintain the meaning, so if you're irritated by swearing, you can just stop reading now. But the important thing is that 'The Face I Miss' has found a home, and we'll get to see it sooner than anyone could possibly expect in Chungmuro, in late Spring.

SCRIPTS
"The foundation of films is the script. Roughly speaking, without a script you can't shoot a film. People go around talking bs all the time how a script makes up 60-70% of a film's success, so at the end of the day, the writer is the one responsible for that script, and they get treated like shit. When you look at a writer and director arguing, it's like they're trying to kill each other. Even people like Kim Dae-Woo [director of 음란서생 (Forbidden Quest), writer of 스캔들 (Untold Scandal)], Shim San [writer of 태양은 없다 (Our Sunny Days) and 비트 (Beat)], Kim Hee-Jae [regular of Kang Woo-Suk films] and I constantly have to fight, and we're in the A-list of writers. Imagine what can possibly happen to newcomers trying to make a living, manipulated like little puppies by the big suits. Many times they end up paying them 10 Million Won and change them around three-four times. So working as a writer in Chungmuro pretty much sucks, I guess I had to become a director because I couldn't take it anymore."

FAILAN
NOTE: SPOILERS
"'Failan' wasn't entirely my creation. In the original draft, Director Song Hae-Sung wanted to wrap the film around a single question: can two people fall in love without ever meeting? I simply thought it wasn't possible. Someone like Failan could have sentiments for Kang-Jae. However, even that feeling can vanish when you lose all hope and nobody's there for you, so the things Kang-Jae does, they become a sort of redemption for him. From his point of view, Failan's just someone you can use to make money, so what kind of sentiment could he possibly feel for her? Instead of making 'Failan' a melodrama, I made it Kang-Jae's journey to find his identity, or at least that's how I see it. The first time he looks at her dead body, it's not like he's sorry for her, so even if he had said '얘 참 안됐다 (That's too bad) it would all be a lie. So what I wrote was Gong Hyung-Jin going: "형, 얘 예쁘지? (Kang-Jae, isn't she pretty?)", and him answering: "에이, 씨발 치워. 아침부터 송장 보여주고 재수없게 (Ehh... shit, take it off. Did I have to wake up in the morning to look at a corpse? Just my lucky day)". People just went crazy about it, they said I filled a beautiful, essay-like script with vulgarity, and turned it into trash. I was alone against the rest of the planning team, all nine of them. So then I asked Director Song once again, and he said: "this time I want to do things for real". At the end of the day, we made a vote, and all the executives were against me, while the producers, Director and actors were all with me. Song just took my ideas, and went that way. If I had to compare 'Failan' with 'The Face I Miss', both Yeon-Ah, Young-Woon and all the other people in the film don't really feel ashamed of themselves, or suffer because of their poverty. There's no people having to deal with pressing issues like ending in prison for 15 years for someone else. If someone asked those characters "why do you live?", then they'd just answer: "to see what happens later." These people didn't become leaders, they just have fun living and take down those who act too cool for their own good. Their life is like a constant departure from routine, so I guess if someone else wrote 'The Face I Miss', it'd be certainly a lot more different than 'Failan'"

SHOOTING
"Because of investment, even just the pre-production stage was difficult to handle. But I've always been a very optimistic person, and I'm someone who went through many difficulties in the past, so that didn't change me one bit. A director can't show weakness on the set, otherwise it's game over. But we've gone through all sorts of ordeals, and we're finally seeing the goal line. The production methods we're employing remind of 70s Chungmuro, running around to find money until the last minute. If we weren't crazy, who would possibly do films this way? Jang Jin-Young and Korean Wave star Kim Seung-Woo shooting a film getting only 20% of their guarantee, is that a plausible scenario? But thankfully the staff was well paid and accommodated, at least compared to other films. What's strange is how the longer we keep shooting the film, the more they stick to the film as I intended it. I guess sharing suffering with someone else is better than doing it alone. They'd go like: "I can't take it anymore... but you're probably feeling the same". So that's how we came to this point."

TEETH
"The day we shot the ending one of my teeth hurt so much I just wanted to pick a stone and destroy it, I never felt so much pain before. When we started shooting, I went to the set and only said a word to [Jang] Jin-Young: "If you cry, then viewers will cry with you. If you show coldness, then the same will happen to them." We went six, seven takes, and Jin-Young must have thought "저 씨발놈 오늘도 열번쯤 가겠구나 (I bet that asshole is gonna go 10 takes today, too)". But then all of a sudden Jin-Young does well, so well she surprises me, enough to forget about my teeth and everything going on in my head. Then Seung-Woo came to the set pissed as hell complaining about the production team not driving him to the set. But then I started looking at him acting from the monitor, and tears just started to flow. From that moment on, it felt like my tooth was completely clean, and it wouldn't hurt anymore."

[Source: Cine21]