By Julio Nakamurakare
It’s not like the story hasn’t been told before — neither the surface storyline, nor the more profound layers of meaning lying underneath. Indeed, the predicament of death row inmates, as seen, perceived and almost felt from prisoner, the executioner, or a third party involved in the horrendous scheme of social revenge, has been the subject of countless retellings, some with an unexpected twist and cancellation suspense in thriller mode, some with humaine concerns as in the Sean Penn-Susan Sarandon winner Dead Man Walking (1995).
On the local front, I cannot help mentioning Liliana Paolinelli’s little-seen, experimental gem Por sus propios ojos (Proper Eyes, 2008), which has a film student working on her graduation thesis approach a prisoner from a different perspective: through the eyes of the women (mothers, wives, girlfriends, lovers, sisters, daughters) who every Sunday go through the painful ritual of strip-down search before passing through the gates of hell to see, for a little while, never enough, their incarcerated men.
Sunday morning women, I’d call them, waking up at the break of dawn to fix themselves a maté before packing food, toiletries, cigarettes and other items their men will need during the interminably long week, before another Sunday arrives. For them, it’s life, albeith with longer intervals between each brief reunion. Some hold hopes of deliverance, others accept, not without a modicum of defiance and relentless faith, the fact that an impenetrable wall stands between them and their incarcerated men.
Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s Soom (Breath) works in a similar way, exploring as it does a mesmerizing — though, in the end, quite sympathetic — situation. Breath is an engaging exploration of love and loneliness from the two sides of the divide: behind bars — actual prison bars, that is — and the other side, with no visible impedimenta but otherwise as maddening and alienating as waiting for an inexorable end slow in coming.
Breath is an intelligent amalgam of vengeance deviously turning into amour fou , as a desperate housewife cannot help but becoming infatuated with a death-row inmate.Housewife Yeon (played by Park Ji-ah) finds out that her husband has been keeping a secret so well for years that she only tardily realizes that he’s been cheating on her. Infidelity, however, is not everything there is in the marital game, because Yeon equates infidelity with betrayal, and this she cannot forgive.
What Kim Ki-Duk brings to this scenario is, for some, a rather predictable twist — Yeon, learning through the media about prisoner Jang Jin, seeks revenge by striking a relationship with him Jan Jing. Kim Ki-Duk’s story, up to this point, does not deviate from the usual narrative: Yeon poses as an ex-girlfriend of Jan Jing’s, and both find mutual comfort in each other. Kim Ki-Duk’s film, like Bernardo Bertolucci’s morally , unjustly maligned Last Tango in Paris, is not about pathological characters giving leeway to their darkest side, to their long-repressed perversion: it’s all about human bonding, the human need to transcend through love, regardless of its manifestation.
What’s visually striking in Breath is the unbelievable lengths Yeon will go to spice up each visit according to seasons, adding fabulous colours, music and songs through the end of a narration only comparable to Tsai Ming-Lian’s The Hole / The Last Dance (1998), in which the dramatic action in a dump of social housing project blooms into song and dance extravaganzas impeccably choreographed and, to conservative viewers, unneeded, uncalled for and even absurd digressions. But comparisons abound, starting with opera, in which the narrative is told through vocal means and orchestral music when this is never feasible, not in the rea, palpable world at least.
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