For the first time in the country’s history, South Korean cinema moved from strength to strength on Saturday, winning two major awards at Cannes.
For his sexy crime film Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wook won the best director award, while Song Kang-ho, best known for his part in the Oscar-winning Parasite, won the best actor award for Broker.
Park, 58, spoke of the obstacles the epidemic posed in his acceptance speech, saying, “Fans didn’t visit movie theaters, but it was the time that we became conscious of the value of cinema.” “I believe that as long as we have hope and power to resist this pandemic, we cineastes will be able to keep theaters and movies open for good.”
Park is only the second South Korean filmmaker to win in this category, following Im Kwon-award taek’s for the historical drama Chihwaseon 20 years ago.
Song’s best actor award was his first, and he is the first South Korean male actor to receive a Cannes acting Award.
“I couldn’t help but run to him,” Park remarked after his victory, hugging Song. “He’s been in a lot of fantastic movies, and now it’s time for him to receive the award.”
“As an actor who has collaborated with filmmaker Park and joined hands with him in winning a prize with Thirst, I’m really moved,” Song said. I’ll never forget the moment he rushed up to me and hugged me.”
Park’s Cannes submission came nearly two decades after his 2004 picture Oldboy, which took home the festival’s second-highest prize.
Years before Parasite, which won the 2019 Palme d’Or and best film at the 2020 Academy Awards, the dark thriller helped propel South Korean cinema into the international stage.
Decision to Leave stars Chinese actress Tang Wei and Korean actor Park Hae-il and tells the story of a detective who falls under the spell of the victim’s wife, whom he suspects of being the cause of her husband’s death, while investigating a man’s deadly fall from a mountain.
The detective plot, which has drawn analogies to the significantly more sexually explicit thriller Basic Instinct, becomes progressively entwined with the main characters’ mutual affection.
When the film opened at the festival, Park told AFP, “I’m not a romantic, but I’m very interested in the portrayal of emotions.”
The Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s 5th Symphony, immortalized in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, is featured on the film’s mesmerizing soundtrack.
The picture, according to Park, was inspired by the systematic police work seen in Swedish Martin Beck police procedural texts. “That’s what I wanted to portray in a film,” he explained.
Song, 55, was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Broker, a film about a woman who abandons an unwanted child in a “baby box” for adoption. In Hirokazu Kore-first eda’s Korean-language film, he plays a kind-hearted middleman trying to sell the newborn to a loving family.
In 2018, Kore-eda received the Palme d’Or for his moving family drama Shoplifters.
Song remarked as he took the prize at the gala ceremony on the French Riviera, “I am very thrilled for my entire family.”
He said that there were no issues on set due to the linguistic and cultural barriers. “Kore-eda is quite familiar with Korean culture,” he explained, “so there were no problems in terms of getting along.” “Koreans are well-versed in Japanese cinema. Personally, I’ve seen practically every film directed by Kore-eda. There are a lot of people who appreciate the aesthetics, which are very Japanese.”
