Failan

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  • Movie: Failan
  • Hangul: 파이란
  • Revised romanization:
  • Director: Hae-sung Song
  • Writer:
  • Producer:
  • Cinemotagraphy:
  • Release Date: April 28, 2001
  • Runtime: 115 Minutes
  • Language: Korean
  • Country: South Korea

[edit] Plot

A nearing middle-aged gangster named Kang-jae (popular Korean actor Min-shik Choi, seen recently in Shiri) is released from prison after a short sentence for selling pornography to under aged clients. Kang-jae tries to rejoin his old gang, but is shown little respect from either his long-time friend and gang leader Yong-shik (Beyong-ho Son), nor the gang’s new recruits, who refer to him as “Mr. Idiot.” Unfortunately for Kang-jae, the lack of respect is well-earned, as he even fails to collect payment from an elderly shop lady. When his boss Yong-shik brutally murders a rival gang lord, Kang-jae is offered the opportunity to regain his ‘corporate honor’ by assuming the blame for the murder. Moments before giving himself up fate intervenes with a more rewarding opportunity for redemption: news of the death of his forgotten ‘paper’ wife Failan, a young, parentless Chinese woman (Hong Kong actress Cecilia Cheung) who a year earlier had paid to marry Kang-jae so that she could remain in South Korea to work. Kang-jae’s routine trip to the hospital to identify Failan’s body and collect her ashes becomes a journey of regret, self-discovery, and redemption.

[edit] Notes

Failan reinvents two tired genres -the over-the-hill gangster film and the tragically fated romance- by foldingthem into each other. What saves Failan from becoming just another stale gangster character study or overwrought tearjerker is the central conceit out of which the film gains its accumulative emotional power: can two people who have never met truly fall in love? The answer is a resounding yes, but this is a love without kisses or sweet whispers. Failan achieves this difficult task by layering its narrative and character development through an intricate back and forth time structure which serves to peel away the superficial layers of difference between Kang-jae, crass and imminently unlikable, and Failan, a paradigm of pure goodness, to reveal two sad, lonely soul mates living on borrowed time. With its recurring use of storefront windows, small shops, photographs, letters, and the changing of seasons, Failan recalls the wonderful Korean melodrama from 1998 Christmas in August (Hur Jin-Ho).

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