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No
Regret |
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Year: |
2006 |
Lee Young-Hoon and Lee Han |
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Director: |
Lee
Song Hee-Il |
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Cast: |
Lee Young-Hoon, Lee Han |
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The
Skinny: |
A powerful and emotionally rewarding gay romance that
turns abruptly violent at the end. Up to that point,
assuring direction and intense performances help make
No Regret one of the best gay dramas to come
out of Asia. |
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Review
by
Kevin Ma: |
While watching the Korean
indie film No Regret, I could not help making
comparisons between it and Wong Kar-Wai's masterpiece
Happy Together. I think the comparisons are entirely
valid; both films deal with realistic male homosexual
relationships, both often delve into the dark side of
these relationships, both feature graphic sex scenes;
and both would be just as compelling if the relationships
depicted were heterosexual ones. Fortunately for No
Regret, which managed to capture record audiences
during its limited run, they are both also just as good.
No Regret opens at a
countryside orphanage that Su-Min (Lee Yeong-Hoon) is
forced to leave upon reaching adulthood. Su-Min moves
to Seoul, where he struggles to afford school and works
two jobs, as an assembly-line worker during the day
and as a private chauffeur at night. While he is openly
gay, he takes no interest when customer Jae-Min (Lee
Han) hits on him. Su-Min is fired from his job at the
factory just as he finds out that Jae Min is also an
executive there. Jae-Min tries to save Su-Min's job
at the factory, but he quits out of pride anyway. Strapped
for cash, Su-Min reluctantly becomes an escort at a
gay bar, where he's warned by the head of the bar, Madame,
that he doesn't like hiring gay men because they elope
when they fall in love with customers. Luckily, Su-Min
is so disillusioned that he's convinced that money is
more important than love. Jae-Min eventually manages
to track Su-Min down, and after Jae-Min's many advances
(not to mention Su-Min's many rejections), they finally
fall in love. However, real world circumstances will
come to drive them apart, and violence ultimately threatens
to plague their relationship.
While Happy Together
tells a messy story about the slow destruction of a
relationship, No Regret uses a simpler love story
structure: two people meet, fall in love, and fight.
And as oxymoronic as it sounds, the film also possesses
some clichés that one is used to seeing in a film with
homosexual themes, such as Jae Min's fiancé and his
family forcing him to get married. Yet, writer/director
Leesong Hee-il, an openly gay man himself, manages to
create convincing emotions throughout. This can be credited
to the screenplay, which develops not just the two focal
characters effectively, but also the supporting characters
who will come to impact the plot. Although not all bases
are covered, as Jae-Min's clichéd subplot still rings
somewhat false, the screenplay manages to be strong
enough that the audience is still involved even when
the film takes an absurd turn at its finale - which
is really the film's only noticeable flaw.
Shot in digital, No Regret
captures the shadowy world of gay prostitution using
impressive handheld long takes and polished visuals,
which are very rare in an indie production such as this.
As in the works of Michael Mann, digital provides a
better way to capture low-light environment, helping
No Regret build a dark atmosphere that represent
the sometimes-dangerous world Su-Min lives in. The film's
look is supported by Leesong's strong direction and
dependency on visual storytelling rather than verbal
exposition. As polished as the visuals are, the storytelling
remains gritty, and while the sex scenes are explicit,
Leesong still presents them in a fairly tasteful fashion.
No review of No Regret
can be completed without mentioning the performances.
As the conflicted Jae-Min, Lee Han expresses the dilemma
that faces a closeted gay man with an equal dose of
pain and conflict. However, the star of the show is
Lee Yeong-Hoon, who also starred in Good Romance,
a short film by Leesong that was eventually expanded
into No Regret. Lee's intense performance effectively
brings out the anger, the desperation and the courage
of Su Min - the anger of being betrayed, the desperation
of his situation, and the courage to fall in love. They
may not be as seasoned as Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung
Chiu-Wai, but Lee Han and Lee Yeong-Hoon are definitely
actors to watch out for in the future.
While I mentioned that comparisons
to Happy Together or even Brokeback Mountain
are valid, it should be noted that No Regret
is strong enough to stand on its own among the pantheon
of great gay films. The direction is confident, the
script is strong, the performances are intense, the
emotions are credible and the film is easily as engaging
as any heterosexual love story. The film may not be
everyone's cup of tea based on the subject matter and
its graphic depiction of sex, but anyone who's willing
to take the plunge will find No Regret to be
one the strongest and audaciously authentic indie films
to come out of Asia in 2006. (Kevin Ma 2007) |
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Availability: |
DVD (Korea)
Region 3 NTSC Limited Edition
Fantom Entertainment
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Korean Lanugage Track
Dolby Digital 5.1
Removable English and Korean Subtitles
Commentary, Featurette, Deleted Scenes, Trailers, etc.
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