2024-07-17 20:37:15
Another transvestite role in the movie ‘Pilot’
Unlike the heavy makeup musical ‘Hedwig’
Transform into a natural and innocent woman
“Create a sharp jawline with acupressure massage”
A woman with an innocent appearance walks down a crowded street. She is wearing a flowing floral one-piece dress and her long brown hair is fluttering in the wind. She is a lady of noble birth. Her skin as white as jade and her charming laughter captivate the hearts of many men. I want to hold her for a moment and ask for her phone number.
But her behavior is strange. She is not used to wearing high heels, so she keeps falling down because she walks with her legs wide apart. She does not hesitate to sit with her legs spread apart in front of people. She goes into the men’s bathroom without thinking and runs out in surprise. Sometimes, she suddenly lets out a low-pitched voice during a conversation. At this point, I can’t tell if this person is a man or a woman.
Actor Jo Jung-seok (44) returns as a transvestite in the movie ‘Pilot’, which opens on the 31st. He played a transvestite in the musical ‘Hedwig’ for five seasons from 2006 to the 23rd of last month, and earned the nickname ‘Podwig’ (white-faced Hedwig). He has once again appeared in front of the public with long eyelashes. At a press conference held at Lotte Cinema World Tower in Songpa-gu, Seoul on the 17th, he joked, “Because of ‘Hedwig’, cross-dressing didn’t feel strange. The moment I put on women’s clothes, my gestures changed naturally.”
The film is a comedy about a male pilot, Han Jung-woo, who gets fired from his company after making sexist remarks to a female flight attendant at a drinking party and then disguises himself as his sister and gets a job at another airline. The premise of a man suddenly disguising himself as a woman and working is quite unrealistic. However, Jo Jung-seok, like Nappeuki in Architecture 101 (2012) and Paeng Heon in The Face Reader (2013), goes beyond the plausibility and makes people burst into laughter with his witty comic acting.
The distinguishing feature of this cross-dressing is its naturalness. ‘Hedwig’ is the story of a drag queen (a man who dresses as a woman) rocker who fails a complete sex change, so the heavy makeup and flashy clothes stand out. On the other hand, in ‘Pilot’, Jo Jung-suk plays an ordinary woman who can be seen wearing a dress or blouse. Han Jung-woo’s confident walk down the street after cross-dressing looks like a typical Korean beauty, like Kang Han-na (Kim Ah-joong) who gained confidence after plastic surgery in the movie ‘200 Pounds Beauty’ (2006). Jo Jung-suk said, “If I had heavy makeup in ‘Hedwig’, I transformed naturally in ‘Pilot’.”
For the movie, Jo Jung-seok lost 7kg. He constantly applied pressure and massaged his chin to create a sharp jawline. He said that he tried on over 100 outfits before filming and thought about which outfits would suit him. Jo Jung-seok said, “When I put on the clothes, I transformed once, when I put on makeup, I transformed twice, and when I put on a wig, I transformed three times. Even I thought I looked pretty after the three-stage transformation.”
The process of cross-dressing in the movie is also something to watch. The so-called ‘construction’ scene where Han Jeong-woo, a man, visits a waxing shop to remove his leg hair in order to transform into a woman, writhes in pain, and covers his groin with tape brings laughter to the audience. Jo Jung-seok said, “I practiced my acting by watching the comedy film ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ (1994) in which American actor Robin Williams disguises himself as an old female housekeeper,” and “I tried not to trivialize cross-dressing.”
The film illuminates the life of a cross-dressing man and leads men and women to understand each other. Han Jeong-woo reflects on his past sexual harassment as he is harassed by male pilot Seo Hyun-seok (Shin Seung-ho) after dressing up as a woman. He sympathizes with the concerns women face while talking to female pilot Yoon Seul-gi (Lee Joo-myung) who is suffering from sexual harassment at a company dinner. Jo Jeong-seok starts off with laughter like the main character Lee Yong-nam in the movie Exit (2019), which mobilized 9.42 million viewers, but moves us to tears later on. Director Kim Han-gyeol, who directed the film, said, “I portrayed the process of a person who has always made choices for himself finally looking back on himself after a special experience.”
Reporter Lee Ho-jae [email protected]
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2024-07-17 20:37:15