Gilsodom (1986) User Reviews

Great look at mid-80s Korean society from veteran director Im Kwon-taek

[mraymond_1918 · 9/10 · 14 May 2011]

I saw this at a retrospective screening at the 2010 Busan film festival. The story revolves around the uniting of Korean families that was taking place in the mid-1980s. It opens with footage from KBS television in which we see emotional scenes of family reunions, but Im mediates this footage through the TV screen of a middle class family. We learn that the wife of this family was from a small town near the border, Gilsoddeum, and with her husband's blessing she goes searching for her former lover and young son. The film then alternates between the present day and flashbacks to her previous life. Eventually she finds her former lover and they encounter a man who they believe to be their son. However, he is a poor, rather uncivilized character who drinks heavily and beats his wife. At the conclusion, the woman returns to her middle-class family, despite learning that the man is (almost) certainly her son. With this film, Im is questioning the "reality" of the sentimental KBS "real-life" melodramas and suggesting that this film, even though a "fiction," is much closer to the truth, that reuniting (and reunification) is not nearly so simple.