Kang Han

, /10

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Kang Han (Korea, 1970)

Chaesikjuuija/ The Vegetarian (2007) is an existential parable. It is only in the third section that we realize this is not the story of a woman going mad but the story of another woman (the sister) becoming aware of what life truly is, and in particular of all the conditioning and constraints that life comes with.

The narrator of the first section, Cheong, is a mediocre man who lives a mediocre life with a mediocre unremarkable submissive wife and is happy that way. He has been married for five years with Yeong-hye. One day she has a dream: a face reflected in a pool of blood. And then decides to throw away all the meat and fish, and becomes a vegetarian. She sleeps little, becomes weak, hardly ever speaks, and now is repelled by sex. She ruins an important dinner with Cheong's boss where everybody is appalled and worried that she became a vegetarian. She also wears no bra which results in her skinny body showing her nipples through the dress. Cheong, embarrassed and worried, calls her parents and her sister In-hye. They are all equally shocked. A flashback informs us that the day before the dream she makes a mistake that almost resulted in Cheong swallowing a piece of a knife, which could have killed him. Finally, one day he rapes her. She is getting thinner, with an emaciated face, and behaving oddly. She suffers from insomnia because she keeps having dreams of murder. In-hye is a successful businesswoman married with an artist, Yeong-ho, and doesn't seem to mind that he is not making money. They have a little son. A family dinner is organized to celebrate In-hye's new apartment, during which the father, a war veteran, slaps Yeong-hye and tries to force-feed her meat. She fights him and then slits her wrists with a knife. A flashback informs us that at the age of nine she was bitten by a dog that then her father killed and served for dinner. At the hospital her mother tries again to feed her meat. Yeong-hye vomits it all. Yeong-hye feels a lump in her chest caused by all the animals that she are in her life. Cheong spends the day and the night at the hospital. When he wakes up, she is gone. She walked out half naked and her only explanation is that it is hot.
Two years later, Cheong has divorced Yeong-hye, who now lives alone and is still a vegetarian after spending some time in a psychiatric hospital. Yeong-ho attends a dance show and is inspired to make an art video of two naked people, their bodies painted in flowers, having sex. He is also inspired by something his wife In-hye told him of Yeong-hye: that Yeong-hye still has the birthmark known as "Mongolian mark" on a buttock. He visits her. She doesn't mind that he sees her walking out naked from the shower. He gets aroused. He asks her to model for her video and to keep it secret to his wife. She meekly accepts and meets him at his studio, where he paints flowers on her naked body and then makes a video of her. He stays up all night to edit the tape, resulting in a five minute art video titled "Mongolian Mark 1". He is now eager to make "Mongolian Mark 2": Yeong-hye having sex with a man, both painted in flowers. Yeong-ho knows he cannot be the man so he asks his fellow artist J, who reluctantly accepts to help to pose naked, but is not told about the sex part. J leaves in disgust when Yeong-ho asks him to have sex with Yeong-hye. Yeong-ho senses that Yeong-hye would have gone all the way to the sex part. Aroused, Yeong-ho tries to have sex himself with Yeong-hye but she rejects him and explains that she was attracted by the flowers not by the naked body of J. Hence Yeong-ho runs to his former girlfriend P and asks her to paint his own naked body in flowers. He then heads to Yeong-hye's apartment with his videomaking equipment, sets it up and proceeds to film the sexual act with the submissive Yeong-hye. Yeong-hye tells him that she dreamed many faces in pool bloods but now she is not scared anymore: she is healed. The video captures the flowers of the two bodies merging into a flower garden of sorts. In the morning her sister shows up while the two are still sleeping. She finds the video equipment and watches the video. In-hye calls an ambulance: her understanding is that her husband Yeong-ho raped a mentally insane woman who needs professional help. Yeong-ho considers killing himself.
The third section, �Flaming Trees,� is about In-hye. In-hye is on a bus heading to the psychiatric hospital where Yeong-hye is hospitalized. Three months earlier Yeong-hye escaped and wandered in the surrounding woods. Yeong-hye believes that she is growing leaves and roots: she is becoming a tree. That's also why she had sex with the artist when he painted their bodies like flowers. At the hospital they tell In-hye that Yeong-hye's condition has worsened so much that they fear for her life: she refuses any food. We learn that In-hye is divorced and lives with her six-year-old son Jin-woo. Her husband was arrested but then released. It's been three years since In-hye became a vegetarian. The doctor tells In-hye that Yeong-hye suffers from both schizophrenia and anorexia and needs to be transferred as soon as possible to a clinical hospital because she is starving herself to death. In-hye tries to convince Yeong-hye to eat but Yeong-hye, who likes to handstand because trees keep their arms in the ground and stand on their heads, claims that she only needs water and sunlight, like any tree. Yeong-hye cannot be fed by IV anymore. Her insides are atrophied. We learn from In-hye's thoughts that their father was violent with the meek Yeong-hye. In-hye feels guilty about Yeong-hye�s life. In-hye herself suffered a health crisis: she bled due to a polyp. We learn that she was never happy with her husband. In-hye takes the ambulance with Yeong-hye to the hospital, and seems uncertain about who is the mad one.

Sonyeon-i Onda/ Human Acts (2007) +

synopsis forthcoming

"Jagbyeolhaji Anhneunda/ No Goodbye/ We Do Not Part" (2021)

synopsis forthcoming