Beautiful

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Japanese DVD cover

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Movie: Beauiful
Hangul: 아름답다
Revised Romanization: Ahreumdapda
Director: Jeon Jae-Heung
Producer: Ki-duk Kim
Writer: Ki-duk Kim
Cinematographer:
Release Date: February 14, 2008
Runtime : 88 min.
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean

Plot

A miserable girl because of her irresistible beauty.. Is her beauty the Blessing? Or the Curse? There is a girl, Eun-young, who is not happy for her breathtaking beauty. She gets lonely and exhausted from the stares from men and jealousies from women. One day, she gets raped by one of her stalkers, Sung-min and hears the terrible words from him. “I did it just because you are so beautiful.” She believes that she was raped because of her cruel beauty and starts to kill her beautiful looks. And there is one guy who runs after her…

Notes

Style of Beautiful has been compared to Ki-duk Kim films and for good reason. Ki-duk Kim wrote the script for "Beautiful" and the movie's director Jae-heung Jeong has worked as an assistant on past Ki-duk Kim films Time and Breath.

Cast

Cha Su-Yeon - Eun-young Kim
Lee Cheon-Hee - Police Officer Choi
Bae Yong-Geun
Jo Seok-Hyeon
Choi Moo-Sung - Detective Kim

Trailer

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Image Gallery

Film Festivals

2008 (10th) Deauville Asian Film Festival - Features Competition - March 12th-16th
2008 (41st) Sitges Film Festival - October 2nd-10th

Comments

Comment #2
Shyra46 Says:
Jun 28 2010 1:36 pm

Well, this movie is very deep indeed and has some tough material.

It tell us the story about a girl who is extremely beautiful, but in fact she doesn't like it, because of that she doesn't have many friends and all man are always trying to make a move on her, when in fact she just wants to live a normal life. After all she is a normal girl.

In the movie some character is going to tell that "Beauty is destiny" and in fact for her is trully gonna be.
After the rape she tries everything to became ugly and a some point she acheives it, but then she starts to get obsessed with the rapist and sees him everywhere.
The police officer who became her stalker truly loves her (in my point of view), even thought sometimes he too became obsessed with her.
At some point she says to him that she will be able to live again if she kills the rapist (that now is in prison), so the policeman makes a plan for her to kill him thinking that he is the rapist. After she kills him, she doesn't get well and keeps seeing the rapist everywhere. in the end she is killed.
However even after she is dead her beauty doesn't leave her and she is once again persecuted by it.
Comment #1
lunapark6.com Says:
Feb 11 2009 4:27 am

If it walks like a duk and quacks like a duk, well it’s probably a Duk. In this case, “Beautiful,” is film directed by first time director Jae-heung Jeon, but for all practical purposes it’s still a Ki-duk Kim film. Mr. Kim in fact wrote the original screenplay several years ago and acted as the film’s producer. Perhaps from the backlash Ki-duk Kim received after making critical remarks about Korean movie goers and his subsequent apology, he decided to pass on “Beautiful” to his understudy.

“Beautiful” centers around the stunning Eun-young Kim (Su-yeon Cha). Unfortunately for Eun-young, her beauty becomes more of a curse rather than a blessing. She finds it difficult to make friends, frequently misunderstood and often finds herself wanting to be just left alone. Her world quickly comes tumbling down when a stalker breaks into her apartment and rapes her.

After this traumatic incident, Eun-young attempts various ways to rid herself of her beauty. She first tries to binge eat herself into obesity and when that doesn’t work, she tries to starve herself into an unattractive figure. During this time a police officer (Cheon-hee Lee) finds himself falling for the still beautiful Eun-young Kim. Eventually the police officer finds himself stalking Eun-young in the same manner as Eun-young’s rapist.

The topic of “beauty” isn’t something new in the Ki-duk Kim world. Kim’s 2006 film “Time” dealt with similar subject matter but from a slightly different angle. Problems that arise with “Beautiful” are the same qualities that have marred Kim’s work in the past.

In “Beautiful” all the characters reside in a artificial world of extremes. Similar to some of Ki-duk Kim’s past films, the characters in “Beautiful” never come across as living-breathing people, but rather symbolic figures to express the director’s ideas. As an example all the male characters in the movie are cardboard thin characters, obsessed only with Eun-young Kim’s beauty. Eventually, this world of extremes causes the movie goer to view the characters as shallow artistic symbols rather than real characters. This then leads to the uncomfortable feeling of being spoon fed one man’s artistic vision.

The story itself causes plenty of alarms. Similar to early Ki-duk Kim films, there’s a heavy misogynist feel to “Beautiful.” Police officers sympathizes with rapists, women in general are viewed only as objects, and there’s that deprave sexual act shown in the final sequence for no meaningful reason. There’s also this oppressive feeling of someone wanting something unobtainable and then becoming engulfed with rage that permeates throughout the movie. Enough so that I wondered how often this happened in Ki-duk Kim’s past.

“Beautiful” did have some moments where it showed promise. Su-yeon Cha won’t make you forget Do-yeon Jeon anytime soon, but her performance still makes you want to see more of her. Unfortunately for the movie, the heavy misogynist feel of “Beautiful” felt suffocating to this viewer and the always extreme actions by all the characters screamed out “wannabe art film!”