Wealthy art gallery owner
Jae-hoon (Jeong Bo-seok) waits in a hotel room to have sex with screenwriter
Soo-jung (Lee Eun-ju). She phones, however, and claims to be running late
and expresses some doubts about consummating their relationship. Later,
the scene is replayed but from Soo-jung’s point of view with a different
result. With its title derived from a surreal artwork by Marcel Duchamp
titled “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors”, Hong Sang-soo’s elliptical
comedy drama A Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors is a process of discovery
for both the characters and the viewer. Whether the theme is viewed as
the subjectivity of memory or how our perceptions change with each new
event, Hong strips away the illusion from romantic love and allows us to
see how ambivalent we all may be beyond our idealization.
The film is divided into
five parts, each chapter introduced by enigmatic titles such as “Perhaps
Intention”, “Perhaps Coincidence”, and “Perhaps Accident”, and separated
by a fade to black, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger in Paradise.
The first, third, and fifth parts take place in the present; the second
and fourth parts show the history of the couple from their first encounter
to the present and reflect the characters’ different perceptions/memories.
The chapter “Perhaps by Accident” seems to describe Jae-hoon as one who
believes that reality is controlled by fate. “Perhaps Intention” describes
the assumptions of Soo-jung who makes her decisions based on her assessment
of men’s true motives and values, judging them by their actions not their
words.
From the outset, the film’s
narrative appears to be linear as it traces a love triangle that develops
between Jae-hoon, Soo-jung and Young-soo, an independent filmmaker. The
characters are very real and their desires and frustrations are palpable.
However, halfway through, the film begins to repeat episodes from earlier
chapters which are dramatized from a different perspective and show slight
variations in detail. The second chapter is a flashback to the couple’s
first meeting. Filmmaker Young-soo (Moon Seong-keun) attends an exhibition
at Jae-hoon’s art gallery with Soo-jung to gain some inspiration for the
film they are working on. The two agree to have lunch with Jae-hoon, perhaps
to persuade the wealthy gallery owner to provide some financial backing
for the film.
A few days later, when
Jae-hoon meets Soo-jung at Kyongbokgoong Palace, he discovers that she
has a pair of gloves that he accidentally left on a bench and believes
the incident to be very much a coincidence. When the incident is dramatized
the second time, however, it appears that Soo-jung has intentionally scheduled
the film crew to meet on the Palace grounds because she knows that Jae-hoon
goes there for lunch. Jae-hoon becomes attracted to Soo-jung and asks her
to have sex with him and become her lover. She tells him that she will
accept his offer but only when they go out for a drink. The sex scenes
are erotic but not graphic and reveal the lovers’ emotional pain lying
just beneath the surface.
Enhanced by an exquisite
original score by Ok Kil-sung and the striking black and white cinematography
of Choi Yeong-taek, Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors is a beautiful
and thoughtful film whose concluding epiphany left me with a lovely glow.
Sadly, however, the glow was short lived as I soon discovered that on the
night of February 22, 2005, Lee Eun-ju committed suicide at her apartment
only a few days after graduating from Dankook University. She was only
24 years old. The memory of her great performance in this outstanding film
will long remain.
GRADE: A
Howard
Schumann