The end of the easter break is rapidly coming to an end and I’m off up to Durham in a couple of days time – a few hours of downtime should be expected around that time. After seeing Kill Bill Vol.1 uncut at the weekend (see my last post) I can’t wait to see Vol. 2 this coming weekend – by all accounts it sounds pretty cool, especially if the trailer is anything to go by. Today I thought I’d bring you a review of a rather bleak but equally touching film:
Bus Stop (Korean) – 7/10
Jae-sub is a severely depressed teacher/writer who works at a Korean night school and spends the rest of his time writing a novel. His work colleagues think he is anti-social and they constantly badger him because he never goes out with them for get-togethers.
One day, 17-year old So-hee enrolls in his class. She looks even more depressed than him and he senses that her life must be overshadowed by unhappy experiences. She likes to think she’s more mature than her fellow classmates but underneath her tough exterior is a little, lost and naive girl who can’t occasionally help herself from behaving childishly.
As Jae-sub and So-hee live in the same town, they frequently meet at the Bus Stop and the teacher and his new student start to develop a friendly relationship with both talking about their problems with each other. They seem to share the same problems in life, a sense of not belonging and not being able to fit into their conventional society and this brings them closer together with Jae-sup wanting nothing more than to heal her pain.
The film itself is thoroughly depressing and the ending does little to raise your spirit with nothing really being resolved. If your don’t mind that sort of thing then I’d definitely recommend it.
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