The Isle

Colour, 35mm
Korea, 2000, 85 min
Section: Kim Ki-duk

Synopsis

Kim Ki-Duk’s fourth film created a sensation at the Venice film festival. It takes place in a world filled with portents, which is constructed upon the progressive fusion of an intense sexual relation and a gorgeous landscape. Hyun-shik meets a taciturn and mysterious woman named Hee-jin on a remote lake populated with floating huts. They become lovers in their water solitude and little by little leave the human world behind. Their powerful physical relationship is played out with ever-increasing tension, smacking of sexuality and death. Both mutual cooperation and cruelty dominate the man and woman’s relationship, and external circumstances exacerbate the situation. Hyun-shik killed someone before arriving at the lake, and Hee-jin buries a prostitute in its depths, a young woman who had unwittingly become her adversary. The closeness of their two bodies can allow no room for the kinds of feelings born of social conventions. Water and blood gradually past fatalistic burdens and of everything else that is not in line with an instinctive and wordless passion generating desire and jealousy, fury and utter resignation.