"Woman Is the Future of Man (Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda)" feels like a cheerless Korean spin on "Jules et Jim" crossed with the chauvinism of "Carnal Knowledge".
From the discussion in the ladies room after wards, people in the audience weren't falling asleep trying to follow the flash backs vs. dreams vs. fantasies vs. flash forwards vs. the narrative of an obsessive threesome of old friends as much as frustration with the women characters. Either the females were fulfilling every racist stereotype Americans have of "Oriental" women, as seductive passive doormats, or the film is one long drunken male fantasy. The women only got to even show emotions a handful of times.
Occasionally the two guy friends weepily confess, through their nonstop talking and drinking reunion, their faults with mea culpas and various self-flagellations about wanting sex "too much", and even admitting that they've mistreated the women they stalk --but that doesn't stop their boorish, insensitive --and worse-- behavior.
It is also possible that a lot of the Korean cultural reference points were lost in the subtitle translations. There seems, for example, to be a familiar form of address in Korean as there is in many non-English languages that was clumsily handled in the translation when women despair of being addressed that way by their lovers.
Whatever theme writer/director Sang-soo Hong intended to portray about the role of Eros amidst a non-purifying snowy night in the city, all that comes across is that men are schmucks and they deserve what they get.
From the discussion in the ladies room after wards, people in the audience weren't falling asleep trying to follow the flash backs vs. dreams vs. fantasies vs. flash forwards vs. the narrative of an obsessive threesome of old friends as much as frustration with the women characters. Either the females were fulfilling every racist stereotype Americans have of "Oriental" women, as seductive passive doormats, or the film is one long drunken male fantasy. The women only got to even show emotions a handful of times.
Occasionally the two guy friends weepily confess, through their nonstop talking and drinking reunion, their faults with mea culpas and various self-flagellations about wanting sex "too much", and even admitting that they've mistreated the women they stalk --but that doesn't stop their boorish, insensitive --and worse-- behavior.
It is also possible that a lot of the Korean cultural reference points were lost in the subtitle translations. There seems, for example, to be a familiar form of address in Korean as there is in many non-English languages that was clumsily handled in the translation when women despair of being addressed that way by their lovers.
Whatever theme writer/director Sang-soo Hong intended to portray about the role of Eros amidst a non-purifying snowy night in the city, all that comes across is that men are schmucks and they deserve what they get.