FRANCE MEETS SOUTH KOREA : "THIRST"

The more observant among you, my readers (we precious few – we band of brothers!) may have noticed I am rather fond of Park Chan Wook. I seem to have pretty much eulogized about him in my previous article about him – see “I’m a Cyborg But It’s Ok”. I am about to do it again. Behold Thirst. A film by Park Chan Wook. And in fact, a rather intelligent adaption of the classic Emile Zola novel Therese Raquin. Confused ? I certainly was. But absolutely titillated by the idea of the combo of one of my favorite classical authors(YES I know, I’m square. Live with it.)and one of my favourite directors? You betcha. I finally got to watch this film the other day. And boy did I get everything I expected and more…
Now, to fully appreciate the film – and the intelligence of the adaptation by Park Chan Wook himself and Seo Gyeong Jong – I should give a brief summary of Therese Raquin. So I shall. Basically, this is the story of Therese, who through circumstances, is forcibly married to Camille, the spoiled and effeminate son of a patron and neighbor. She then falls in love with Laurent, a vagabond who stays with her more because he can no longer afford prostitutes than anything else. They proceed to murder Camille to be together; however, murder is not as “easy to forget” as the couple first imagine… It is basically a naturalist novel which seeks to prove Zola’s ideas on the human condition and this is a very short summary of it indeed – I strongly recommend you read the book as well!
Now, onto the film. As you can imagine, it is set in South Korea and all the characters are Korean. Now, the Therese in this story is Tae Ju who is an orphan who was brought up by Mrs. Ra and forced to marry her spoiled son Kang Woo. Tae Ju is very unhappy in her marriage indeed. Laurent however, is Sang-hyeon and he is a childhood friend of the family and – wait for it – a catholic priest working in a hospital. Not a very appropriate euphemism for a playboy? No wait, there is more. He is a priest, who through a blood transfusion that has seemingly gone rather wrong has become a vampire. The only way he can survive is through consuming human blood, which makes life complicated if you believe in “Thou shalt not kill.” The couple will proceed to “inter-infect” each other with their own personal brands of good and evil. Through Tae Ju, Sang-hyeon discovers lust and love for the first time in his life. Tae Ju who is left unsatisfied by her husband clings to him. She is entranced by the idea of leaving Kang Woo and being with him. Especially if this means living (and being young) forever – thus Kang Woo’s days become numbered. All that being said, Sang-hyeon is still very much a priest in his own soul and even though love and lust may lead him to do unexpected things, well, let us say he will stay true to himself in the end…
Honestly, you don’t need to read Zola to enjoy this film – but those of you who have will do so more, I enjoyed the many parallelisms. And please don’t think “blasphemy” right away – this is a very tasteful and respectful, all be it modern and slightly well, different adaption. But that is not to say Park Chan Wook has not added something “personal” to the mix. The film is touching, observant, intelligent and sometimes quite hysterically funny in the way only Asian cinema can be. And Park Chan Wook’s great success is that he can give this whole range of emotions without disrupting the general feeling of the film, a film that becomes rather somber and at one point slightly surreal towards the end of its 2 full hours. It is one of those films that will most probably give you a migraine if you are prone to them or just make you grumpy for the rest of the day. But you will not regret watching it. That, I promise you.