Reviewed - The Isle (Seom): As nothing is to be gained from delaying the inevitable, we may as well begin by considering the notorious scene in this 2000 Korean film in which the female lead, part avenging angel, part lady of the lake, inserts fishhooks into her vagina and then, as if that were not uncomfortable enough, hauls them out again.
Vile as the sequence is, it could be taken as just a bit of envelope-pushing shock therapy were it not for the fact that, at another point in the picture, the hero does something similar to his oesophagus. The suspicion that the director is unable to distinguish between the symbolic significance of these two acts does rather confirm his reputation for misogyny and suggests that his undeniable gift for composition is not accompanied by any great aptitude for reason.
But Kim Ki-Duk, whose much less troubling Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring gained him some respectability on its release earlier this year, is certainly a very singular director. The Isle, an unholy combination of Crime and Punishment and Creature from the Black Lagoon, follows a police officer who, tormented with guilt after killing his girlfriend, retires to a hut on a lake to contemplate his own wretchedness. Just as he is about to shoot himself in the head a young girl, who had earlier been observing him from the shore, stabs him from below. In the context of The Isle, this constitutes an act of quite extraordinary tenderness.
The girl has, as girls will in this director's films, been working as a prostitute for the local fishermen, who seem to feel that any level of humiliation is permissible in such transactions. This is not a happy movie.
As in Spring Summer (but not his truly awful Bad Guy, which came in between), Kim Ki-Duk proves that he can conjure up moments of superficial virtuosity - steady images of the misty lake, those stomach-churning torture scenes - without getting across any proper reason for them to exist. Which is a long-winded way of saying his films are quite brilliantly meaningless.
