Ahen Quentin Tarantino was President of the Cannes Jury in 2004, he tried to convince his fellow judges to award the Palme d’Or to a Korean film, revenge drama Oldboy. He failed. But the film and its director, Park Chan-wook, made their way around the world nonetheless. Today Park – with Bong Joon-ho, the director of “Parasite” – is at the forefront of what is arguably the most exciting cinema in the world right now, South Korean. His new film “The Woman in the Mist” is a mixture of noir crime and impossible love story.
WELT: Whenever a director is trying to raise money for his new film, he is asked what it is supposed to be about – summed up in two or three sentences. Can I try that for “Frau im Nebel”?
Park Chan-wook: let you hear.
WELT: It’s about a detective who doesn’t want to solve his latest case and a suspect who doesn’t want him to stop working on the case – does that pretty much sum it up?
Park: Perfect.
Tarantino wanted to give him the Palme d’Or in Cannes: Park Chan-Wook
Quelle: © Plaion Pictures
WELT: How often did you think about Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo while writing the screenplay?
Park: Not at all when writing. But when I was offered the comparison after the premiere, I thought about it and decided that I carried Hitchcock’s film in my heart the whole time, because it was one of two films that made me want to direct in the first place to want to become
WELT: Which was the other?
Park: Director Kim Ki-young’s “Woman of Fire ’82” is a color remake of the black-and-white Korean classic The Housemaid, which the same director filmed two decades earlier. The story of both films, summed up in one sentence: A middle-class family is destroyed by a femme fatale who comes to her as a housemaid.
WELT: Are there actually still new plots in films, or does it all just depend on how the plot is staged?
Park: I’m not pessimistic, new plots are always possible. I don’t think The Woman in the Mist has the same plot as From the Realm of the Dead, but there are certain larger connections, plot types that have evolved over time and are accepted by everyone. And yes, “Realm of the Dead” and “Woman in the Mist” belong to the same plot type.
WELT: “The Woman in the Fog” is one of the many films that were made before the pandemic and did not see the light of day for a long time. What did you do with the film during this time?
Park: We originally wanted to go to Venice in 2021, where we could have shown it, the festival was taking place. But what after that? The Korean cinemas were closed, we wouldn’t have had an audience. That’s how time passed. I could have ticked off this project and moved on to the next, but felt unable to. I’ve watched Woman in the Fog over and over again and every time I’ve spotted something small that needed improvement in post-production. If you will, the pandemic has made the film better.
Interrogation scenes as the absolute core
WELT: Let’s talk about the interrogation scene. During film interrogations, there are otherwise back and forth cuts, once to him, once to her. But you do it in a way that has never been seen before.
Park: I didn’t want to repeat what we’ve seen a million times. Especially not because the interrogation scenes are the absolute core. We don’t see the main characters having sex, they don’t go out to eat together. What happens between them – that they develop romantic feelings – happens during the interrogations. I had to make sure that the audience was paying full attention to the emotional part, not the factual part with questions about the case. What is happening is happening underground. There is a mirror in the scene and I play with it. We see them both in it, and when she speaks, for example, we see her in focus but not him. Normally both should be in focus in the mirror. That’s just one of the tricks I used to escape the routine and sharpen and draw viewers’ attention.
WELT: Cell phones and social media were suddenly everywhere 15 years ago, and cinema has since tried to incorporate them in a meaningful way, which usually doesn’t do very well. For me, “The Woman in the Mist” is a film that puts her at the service of history like no other.
Park: It is inevitable nowadays to incorporate these technologies. This is our reality. I’ve tried to avoid close-up shots of these devices as much as possible, but that’s just not possible anymore. So, I said to myself, you’re going to play with it. For example, there is a scene where the detective sends a text message. His eyes may be on the phone, but his heart is with the suspect. I’m now filming his face from the device’s perspective as if she were looking at him on a cell phone. This makes the connection between the two optically closer than it actually is technically.
WELT: They also use another technology, the translation app, because he is Korean and she is actually Chinese.
Park: This is also about feelings. When she’s emotionally upset and can’t find the right Korean word, she uses the translation app. This device is a means for me to increase the tension. You can feel her excited and hear her say something quickly in Chinese – but to understand her, the detective and we have to wait for the app to translate. Then the machine spits out the words, but they are just the words, the deeper meaning associated with them, the nuances of speaking have been lost. The machine voice is monotonous, and it is also a male voice.
WELT: The two of them could use nothing more inappropriate for communication than this program.
Park: In order to understand what she means, you have to notice her facial expression, her gestures, her tone of voice. The app then delivers the specific content. In the cinema, what is heard and what is seen usually have to be in sync, here I separate one from the other. So we as viewers have to combine both to get close to their feelings. It’s a new viewing experience in a way.
WELT: Later in the film, however, she switches to a female app voice.
Park: Yes, and she’s changing the way she speaks, using short phrases instead of long sentences. She, the human, has learned. The app no longer translates grammatical structures, but individual words. This brings her closer to the woman’s emotions.