Breathless

Yang Ik-June, Kim Kkobbi

Remember how Howard Hawks once took "the most insolent man on screen" (Bogart) and capped him with an even more insolent woman (Bacall)? In essence, actor Yang Ik-June pulls off the same trick in his incandescent directorial debut, by some way the most prize-laden Korean movie of the year. He himself plays Kim Sang-Hoon, one of the meanest and most foul-mouthed heavies in film history, a strong-arm man for a small debt-collecting agency, and then has the character meet his match in high-school senior Han Yeon-Hee (Kim Kkobbi, also terrific). Both of them come from seriously dysfunctional families (his revealed in flashbacks, hers an integral part of the plot) and both have built themselves "hard" fronts to conceal their inner hurt; watching them warily square up to each other, neither quite believing what they're doing, provides an intense pleasure which cuts across the film's otherwise bleak and violent view of human shortcomings.

The film's hand-held camerawork and narrative sprawl combine to create an impression of chaotic informality, but this is actually a carefully plotted and expertly paced piece of work, belying the relative inexperience of all involved. It was, of course, cheeky of Yang to steal one of the most famous titles in world cinema for his own film. Amazingly, he gets away with it. His powerhouse achievement will, indeed, leave you breathless.

Winner, Tiger Award, Rotterdam 2009.