Chunhyang is a costume epic and love story that plays like a cross between Cinderella and a rock opera. The film, from Korean director Im Kwon Taek, is a decorative undertaking of such visual splendour that western audiences should be prepared to be dazzled.
Shown last year at the film festivals in Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and New York City, Chunhyang is told in the ancient operatic tradition of pansori, which is just the sort of information film critics always have at their fingertips, particularly when it says so right here in the production notes for the film. As far as we can make out, pansori is a wildly attractive form of narration involving folk song and dance, and the overall impression for the viewer is one of being read to within a living book. With great illustrations.
Chunhyang is a love/political/historical/inspirational story set in the 18th century and involving star-crossed lovers. Mongryong is the son of the Governor of Namwon. He falls in love at first sight with the beautiful Chunhyang, but she is the daughter of a former courtesan, so any such relationship is really not on. They must marry in secret.
Mongryong goes away to finish school and do the noble things a noble-born guy must do. A wicked new Governor shows up and makes a big pass at Chunhyang.
When she, the daughter of a courtesan, refuses the big cheese's sexual advances, he sentences her to death. Will her love, Mongryong, get back in time to save her?
Song, colour, amazing costumes, drama, pathos, passion and, surprisingly, quite a few laughs -- it's all here in Chunhyang. The story and the characters are familiar from fairy tales of love and valour, with inherent good and evil drawn in bold, clear lines.
This is a movie for grown-ups. Mind you, though not always quick enough to read the subtitles, a couple of seven-year-old girls sat and watched Chunhyang with this reviewer and seemed truly enthralled by the whole thing. It is a wonderful film to look at and deeply satisfying in its obvious moral, though we also liked the less-emphasized statements about feminism and the wicked class system. There's some vague nudity, one or two bawdy songs and one scary beating scene in Chunhyang, but nothing that should keep children old enough to read subtitles easily from seeing it.
On the pageantry scale, Chunhyang easily beats anything else out there.
(This film is rated PG)
More Movie Reviews
