On 14 November 2010 director Im Sang-soo attended the London Korean film Festival to attend a screening of his film The Housemaid. Shortly before the screening he took the time to answer some questions for Colette Balmain..
[Colette Balmain]: During the talk ‘What is the Future of Korean Cinema (11th November 2010, ICA, London), Director Jang said that it was necessary to leave the past behind and deal with contemporary issues. Given that both The President’s Last Bang (South Korea: 2005) and The Old Garden (South Korea: 2006) deal with political oppression during military dictatorships, do you agree with this statement?
[Im Sang-soo]: This is an extremely important issue. Within a short period of time, South Korea has achieved political and economic stability. However questions of the past have not been looked at properly as a result and we need to examine the past much more seriously as it is so important to contemporary Korea.
[CB]: In an interview about The Good Lawyer’s Wife (South Korea: 2003), you talk about Korean men as haunted by personal/political trauma which is passed on through the male line. Are there signs of this changing and why do you see women as unaffected by this.
[Im Sang-soo]: This question relates the first question. How can we deal with the scars from history incurred in the past? This failure to deal with the past manifests itself in a type of violent masculinity. History is written by men who are less oppressed than women while women are less directly involved in the process of making and writing history.
[CB]: From my research it appears that gender roles are still fairly traditional and while it is accepted for men to have affairs; women are still meant to find fulfilment in the home. Is this still true?
[Im Sang-soo]: Attitudes towards gender are clearly very traditional in Korean Society. [Here Director Im asked me about the date of the Reformation in the UK]. Christianity in South Korea is very similar to that during the 16th and 17th Century religious reformation in the UK and yet at the same time, we live in the 21st century. Due to the rapid pace of political and economic change, South Korea has passed over the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and found itself in 21st century. This means that women are still exploited and this is the reality in contemporary Korea.
[CB]: Your films are noted for their frank and realistic depictions of sexuality. Has this made it difficult to get funding or casting your films?
[Im Sang-soo]: While South Korea is still very traditional; there is a paradox in that attitudes towards sexuality are very advanced. Investors like my films. However casting the female leads is more difficult as actresses are often condemned when they take their clothes off.
[CB]: What made you decide to remake Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid (South Korea: 1960) seeing it is always a difficult task to take on films that are seen as cinematic masterpieces, especially after so many attempts to remake classic films have failed with audiences as well as being panned by critics.
[Im Sang-soo]: This film is different to the original. The producer and the script came first, and then I was contacted and asked to direct it. As a commercial director, I saw it as an opportunity and that I did not have to faithful to the original unlike young directors who feel they have to obey the original.
[CB]: In the original film, the housemaid is largely an unsympathetic figure although it seems as she is also a victim of the class system rather than the typical femme fatale. Given that your films have been praised for their positive representation of women -The Good Lawyer’s wife has been seen as a feminist film – what changes did you make to the film and why?
[Im Sang-soo]: The Housemaid is all about hierarchy. Since the original, Korean society has been totally transformed. However hierarchies still exist and are even more stratified in contemporary Korea. In my film, the owner of the household is an example of the new Korean superrich, whose lives are totally divorced from those of the ordinary people. The guilt in my version is solely that of the owner. The film demonstrates how the rich and the poor have totally different lives.
[CB]: There has been a great deal of discussion at the London Korean Film Festival about Korean cinema being in a slump. Yet for Western audiences and critics some of the best foreign language films have come from South Korea in recent years. Last year, both Mother (Bong Jong-hoo, South Korea: 2009) and Thirst (Park Chan-wook, South Korea: 2009) received a great deal of acclaim both from critics and audiences and this year, Ha-Ha-Ha (Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea: 2010); Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea: 2010) and Director Im’s own The Housemaid have been very popular. All of these are well made films. What is your opinion on the state of the Korean film industry?
[Im Sang-soo]: It is no coincidence that the films you mentioned are all films from the same generation of post-war South Korean film directors. The problem is with the new generation of filmmakers.
I would like to thank Paul Koren, the Korean Cultural Centre and the London Korean Film Festival Centre for making this interview possible. Many thanks go to Im Sang-soo for being so generous with his time and so enthusiastic during the interview. Finally, this wouldn’t have been possible without the excellent translation skills of An Ji-yoon.
