White Night (2012)

Maybe I have to modify my view on Korean queer films because of this.
Unlike its counterparts in other countries, most of the Korean queer films, in my opinions, have always been dark and gloomy, but at the same time they try to reflect the reality of gays living in Korean society. This film is one of the greatest I ever watched in terms of queer films.

This film is not an exception. The overall mood is gloomy, dark, and painful. However, at the same time, Director Lee-Song Hee Il magically depicts passion and warm, heart-beating romance at the same time. I don't know why Director Lee-Song's films are mostly dark and gloomy. Maybe he thinks it is so in Korea, which I agree but don't like much.

This film is about a story that occurs in one night. But that occurrence leaves a deep impression and love in each other's heart. If you are meant to meet someone, when and how doesn't matter.

The story is so good, touching your heart soon and acting is great. The emotions of the actors are delicate and abundant. I watched this film in Korean version, so I dont know if the English translation is good or not. Maybe you cannot get the exact impression that I got if watching it with English subtitle.

I strongly recommend you to watch this film!  You won't regret  it. 

Leggi di Più

AHHHHH~ this film ,i quite like it not the greatest i have seen but its worth the watch i love the how it gradually yet realistic the emotions were and how it began to change as this film went on. i defiantly liked the play in lighting as well. The ending is as if it is trying to please the view but at the same time not giving u a hidden look of the reality that they face. i understand what the director was going for but what i give him my support is that he didnt keep it as ur common ending as if there would be no hope but gave us a shimmer of hope
and love at the end. What i loved more was the One night stand guy i love the symbolic play in words and scene how towards the end he achieved what he had said in the beginning to make it real. to him it didnt matter the room or if it was a stall or not it mattered the meaning behind the act to him. and towards the end i loved how the main character pulled through and showed his emotions like i said he did well in riding the emotion rollercoaster and beat it with a smile on his face.

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A GEM FROM SOUTH KOREA

Perfectly shot, lighted, acted, directed, scored. A hidden gem from Korea.

A little sad atmosphere and themes (rejection, loneliness), but realistic as well. Love the story.

When Won Gyu (the flight steward) tells his ex that he is now “with a 34-year-old” and he tells his new “friend” (the one in orange jacket) that he is now “with a 24-year-old,” it means he lied to both. He is actually single because of the trauma that happened to him before.

He doesn’t want to go back and stay in Korea because he was a victim of homophobia, publicly humiliated and outed, and disowned by his father.

Sex scenes were done tastefully. Chemistry is intense.

Character driven movie, instead of plot driven. Acting is superb!

Definitely deserves a perfect rating.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE A LOT.

10 / 10.

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I love the fact that the story kinda leave me hangin but still doesn’t really make me expecting something further. I like the amount of silence scenes without saying a word more like mimicing the situation or the feeling itself. The mood built up easily by the scene, the gesture the acting the way they took breathe, the move and the night atmosphere. It just because I haven’t found the subtitled yet so I am still sort of speculating what the characters might say, so I don’t really enjoy the situation that much since most of the movie was took mostly ‘night theme’ yet it suitable to make a dark mood to built up.

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Painfully Slow and Full of Itself

OK, just finished watching. Haven't read comments so maybe I'll feel stupid later, but here goes:

I found this to be painfully slow and full of itself, as if by just being on screen it had somehow already proved its worth, so there was no need to let me know what was going on.
Constant smoking does not replace quality acting. Not that the smoker is a bad actor, but that kind of 'movie smoking' is such a cliche.
The other character didn't smoke so he chewed gum in a deeply meaningful, sort of Clint Eastwood-type way.
Walking extremely slowly in silence does not always replace dialogue or plot, especially when its repeated over and over.
One of those films that presents being gay as the worst thing on earth, and maybe it is in Korea, I wouldn't be surprised by that, but offers no hope, no route to something better, no nothing.
Why on earth would orange jacket keep pursuing the gum chewer? Boring, arrogant, uncommunicative, weird, sullen, sulky, and he should have picked up on all that in the first five minutes. It was downhill from there, yet he kept after him. Why? I didn't find that believable.
I thought orange jacket had a limp at the beginning? Where'd that go? I though we were in an extended flashback but that turned out not to be the case.
Meh...whatever. There's so many much better films out there.

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full of humanity in all it's forms

some films that give a gloss over feelings, but White Night brings you along into a whirlwind of chaos revolving one person's struggles, humanity, and an internal battles. it's the good with a lot of the bad, and the feeling of watching self-destruction take the wheel.

the story focuses on one person, wongyu, his pain and journey through processing the trauma he has gone through. though there is no sugarcoating to any of this, his one night stand brings him the grace he had not been given by anyone else. you can see the recognition of kindness, how it's foreign to him after going completely numb to the world, and how he holds back from any kind of expectations. yet, this person, a virtual stranger, keeps coming back to him and keeps being the one to support him in exacting some pain onto the people that have destroyed a part of him that he won't ever get back.

he had hoped things would be the same, at least that is my guess, so when he returns and taejoon has moved on, wongyu's tears are what i interpret as regret. regret that he didn't call taejoon when he left or afterwards as years went by. even as he's grown, the trauma and pain still haunts wongyu and i think that also reflects the untold and unacknowledged discrimination and hate that the lgbtq+ community in south korea goes through even up to this day as not much has changed to help protect victims of discrimination, attacks, and homophobia. (and yes, this continues to be a worlwide issue)

this film is a journey from beginning to end. we get the fear, pain, and helplessness from wongyu but we also get the desperation from taejoon and his anger as well. anger at the world for it's cruelness, frustration with himself for not being able to just walk away, that he is not what the other needs and he's already too emotionally invested, and the feeling helplessness while watching someone struggle to open up again once he learns what wongyu is really doing with the constant back and forth they have going on that night.

the cast is phenomenal and truly gave life to the feelings of these characters to a degree that it makes you go through the rawness of their struggles just within that single night.

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The director's style is fully evident in this picture, which, when you dive into it, is not at all flat, as it might seem at first glance. Human destinies, human natures, a momentary true glimpse on the path of two lives. Whoever is able to perceive this will find it in the film. The acting was very good, the most appealing to me was Lee Yi Kyung as Tae Joon, and I must admit that he looked very hot as well. Gyu Won-a's character was too cold, marked by the past, but that was just the way it was. I recommend it only to those who have experience and a feeling for Korean parts


Styl režiséra je naplno patrný i u tohoto snímku, který, když se do něj ponoříte, není vůbec plochý, jak by se mohlo na první pohled zdát. Lidské osudy, lidské povahy, chvilkový pravdivý záblesk na cestě dvou životů. Kdo je schopen toto vnímat, ve filmu si to najde. Herectví bylo velmi dobré, nejvíce mě oslovil Lee Yi Kyung jako Tae Joon, a příznám, že navíc vypadal hodně sexy. Postava Gyu Won-a byla až moc chladná, poznamenaná minulostí, ale to tak prostě bylo. Doporučuji jen těm, co mají zkušenosti a cit pro korejská dílka.

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SPOILERS

This movie its sad. I wanted to say that. Actually, sad its an understatement.
This will be the whole review. If you wanna watch something sad by definition, do it. But be aware of mentions and scenes of homo**obia. The acting is amazing, they re able to make you feel the sadness, trauma and anger the protagonist felt.
Besides the beating scene that made me happy because that horrible human deserved it, its sad all the way through. Even the 18+ scenes have some kind of sad feel to them. The ending its, again, sad (no surprise there). I wish this would ve had a sequel or something because the characters deserved one and i wanted to see if they ever meet again and maybe have a happy ending. I guess we cant always get one.

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A story of great visual and auditory beauty, with great emotional depth

Won-Gyu (Won Tae-Hee), a German airline pilot, returns to South Korea after a two-year absence, but only intends to stay a single night. Victim of a homophobic attack some time ago that forces him to live abroad, a decision also motivated by his search for a place where his homosexual condition is more permissive and tolerant, he faces the judgment that the homophobic and conservative South Korean society has on homosexuality. .
The protagonist tries to outwit his nightmare by living in constant transit. His home is anonymous and ever-changing hotel rooms, his connections with others temporary and rootless, of little significance to his life.
In one of those typical, completely evasive encounters, he meets Tae-Joon (Lee Yi-Kyung – (학교 2013/ Hakkyo 2013/ School 2013), a young gay delivery man on a motorcycle, whom he meets through chat websites. Despite Being a few years younger and having a less rewarding and paying job, Tae-Joon is much more comfortable with himself, including his sexual preferences.
On this basis, Korean director Leesong Hee-il writes and directs 'Baekya' ('지난여름, 갑자기'/'White Night'), a 75-minute film that has as its predecessor the short film 'One Night', with which he develops the trilogy known as 'One Night, Two Days' (백야), which includes the medium-length film 'Suddenly Last Summer' (지난 여름, 갑자기/'Jinanyeoreum, gapjagi'), and 'Namjjokeuro Ganda' ('Going South' /남쪽으로 간다), all from 2012, in which three unconnected stories are told that have gay themes in common.
Leesong Hee-il has an extensive filmography since his film debut in 2004 with the short film '동백꽃' ('Dongbaegkkoch'/ 'Camellia Project'), but is probably best known for his 2006 film '후회하지 않아' ('Huhoehaji Anha '/'No Regret'). In 2009, the director contributes to the overall project 황금시대 (Hwang-geumsidae/Short! Short! Short!), and also makes the feature film 탈주 (Talju/Break Away, 2009), before filming the short that begins the trilogy, in 2012.
As in the rest of the three pieces, 'White Night' tells a story of great visual and auditory beauty, but perhaps most important is the emotional depth. The raw honesty of the film's narrative – centered on the often deeply problematic feelings of its characters, all asking difficult but very real questions – is commendable.
Another characteristic of Leesong Hee-il's cinematography is the use of music that accompanies the images in a memorable way, with songs ranging from Western popular music to Korean ballads, being chosen with great care in the purpose. to instill a sense of peace, insane frenzy, sadness, uprooting, loss, abandonment, nostalgia or even melancholy, in contrast to the inner turmoil experienced by the characters.
With a high degree of concision, achieved within extreme brevity and economy of language, as well as by the semantic ambiguity and the interpretative potentials that the film offers, Leesong Hee-il reflects how Taee-Joon does not seek sex for the sake of it and, although not opposed per se to a one-night stand, he harshly rejects Won-Gyu. The director's goal is to expose how people relentlessly pursue a more meaningful and lasting relationship than a sexual romp, like the one Won-Gyu intends to have in a dark public bathroom frequented only by casual lovers.
However, as the night is still young, and these two almost strange individuals continue to gravitate towards each other, in this journey about the complexity of human relationships, accepting the other, emotional pain more than physical, and criticism To a society that still considers homosexuality a perversion, Tae-Joon learns, little by little, about the painful burden that Won-Gyu carries, while the latter, perhaps for the first time, sees an individual who simply accepts himself as such. as he is while accepting the other as he is.
Knowing that perfectionism can destroy creation, so he polishes his works seeking exquisiteness, Leesong Hee-il shows how Won-Gyu's internal conflict comes to the fore through the external conflict that arises when he meets again with a boy who knows about the past, before deciding to try to erase what happened in foreign lands. This climax comes surprisingly early, not to the benefit of the narrative, considering that the film begins as a short film and, perhaps, could have done even better to remain that way.
Furthermore, some of Tae-Joon's actions, in particular his decision to stay by the side of someone he barely knows and who displays quite erratic and then also violent behavior, are not entirely understandable. Be it sexual attraction, sympathy, pity, or whatever reason pushes Tae-Joon to stay with Won-Gyu, her presence is what offers the latter the opportunity to heal his past wounds and realize that a different reality may be possible.
In other words, thanks to Tae-Joon, Won-Guy comes to understand that there may be hope, which is why it's worth returning to South Korea more than once every few years, for more than a single night... and even remain in the country indefinitely.
There is an incredible beauty in the suffocating, depressing, dark, and even demented atmosphere due to the ghosts of the past that haunt one of the two characters and the intertwining of the lives of these young people. Who will not be trapped with the souls that inhabit the film? Who will remain impassive in the face of characters embodied in beings that we have once known or could be ourselves?
The entire trilogy reveals to us a filmmaker with a sure pulse to capture the audience through the use of the right phrase and image, the clarity of the speech. No wonder he is considered "one of the most interesting contemporary gay Asian directors." And in this effort to create stories, reality opens up in a multicolored fan with overlapping layers and blurred borders.
The essence of the film, which had its European premiere at the 2013 Berlinale, followed by screenings in Vancouver, Hong Kong and Jeonju and at the 27th London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival that same year, also lies in the fact that Tae -Joon could very well be precisely the type of person that Won-Gyu needs in his life, like Kyung-Hoon himself needs Sang-Woo in 'Suddenly Last Summer'.
Open-ended like all parts of Leesong Hee-ill's trilogy, 'White Night' feels less gloomy than 'Suddenly Last Summer' and 'Going South', leaving the viewer with the possibility of a long journey towards happiness. still ahead for both characters.
We are facing a stinging film, which digs into the skin and the bones not only because of what it describes, but because we are certain that beings like the main characters are not so few in a world dominated by homophobia in a conservative society that makes It makes homosexuals feel ashamed, which often leads them to blame themselves for not being able to meet the imposed criteria of normality.

Note: The reviews of the remaining pieces of the trilogy, in MDL, can be found on the page dedicated by the virtual platform to each of them.

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