Film Festival 09 - Thirst
Thirst
Bakjwi, South Korea/USA 2009, 133m
Director: Park Chan-wook
Festivals: Cannes (In Competition) 2009
Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2009
Incredibly Strange opens its doors to unleash the ravenous vampire
priest flick Thirst, the latest from Korean auteur extraordinaire
Park Chan-wook, the disturbed mind behind fan-favourite
Oldboy.
"Thirst is a torrid expression of predatory instinct and
insatiable, all-consuming love, embodied through its protagonist's
difficulty in holding his day job as a priest-cum-miracle-healer,
and his night shift as an accidental vampire and fornicating
murderer... Park takes his famed eroticization of violence, pain
and cruelty to new, feverish heights, and garnishes it with
deliciously sadistic gallows humor...
Song Kang-ho turns in another forceful yet controlled performance
as Sang Hyun, a provincial priest who volunteers to undergo an
experiment in Africa to find a cure for a deadly virus. He
survives, but becomes a vampire through an unknown blood
transfusion. Unlike conventional vampires who only crave blood,
Sang Hyun discovers that he 'thirsts after all sinful pleasures'.
He develops a flair for mahjong, justifies his way of obtaining
blood supplies, and covets his childhood classmate, Kang-woo's wife
Tae-ju." - Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter
"It's liberating to watch a film that melds with the obsessions of
its characters, that strips the moorings from genre expectations
and leaves viewers asking whether the film has lost its mind or
they have. Our advice& when Thirst goes nuts, go with
it... Blending plot elements of Double Indemnity and Natural
Born Killers with the ripe sensuality of Francis Coppola's take on
Dracula, the film has made festival critics sit up in startled
pleasure, as if they'd just received the most luscious neck-bite."
- Richard Corliss, Time
In Korean with English subtitles
