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| A poster for the film "Maggie"/ Courtesy of ATNINE FILM |
By Jung Hae-myoung
Director Yi Ok-seop's award-winning film "Maggie" has drawn much attention since last year when it garnered four prizes at the Busan International Film Festival. The film centers on young people's anxieties and their efforts to untangle themselves from their own trust issues by exploring how trust is destroyed and repaired, which requires a great deal of mutual effort.
During a news conference at CGV Yongsan I'Park Mall in Seoul on Tuesday, the mystery comedy film had generated much buzz for its style and mise-en-scene which was compared to U.S. filmmaker Wes Anderson who earned fame for his distinctive visual and narrative styles.
The title "Maggie" is intriguing to audiences as it means catfish in Korean. The catfish, voiced by Chun Woo-hee, is the narrator of the film. Director Yi said she wanted the audience to consider the fish as a character, even though it is not human.
"The first image that came into my mind was a woman staring into a fish tank," Yi said. "It's rare to see catfish in a fish tank, and this causes one to think which fish they believe is good for a fish tank and which is not," she said.
"We're familiar with goldfish, but this doesn't mean that goldfish are good for the fish tank. It could be an eel or a catfish. I decided to put catfish in there because it is sensitive and tenacious."
"Maggie" is Yi's first feature film.
The film starts with an incident at St. Maria hospital where an X-ray image featuring a couple having sex is found. Everybody wonders who they are. Yoon-young (Lee Joo-young) and her boyfriend Sung-won (Koo Gyo-hwan) emerge as suspects, which turns out not to be true.
The film consists of several different narratives which are seemingly unrelated, but consistent in the topic of "trust." For example, the director of the hospital, Lee Kyung-jin (Moon So-ri) has had trust issues since she was young. Yoon-young and Kyung-jin start "trust education" to help Kyung-jin overcome her traumatic past and trust people again.
Meanwhile, Yoon-young has growing distrust toward her boyfriend Sung-won after hearing from his ex-girlfriend that Sung-won was violent when they were dating.
"I wanted to show how trust is broken and repaired," Yi said. "Sometimes lies can be perceived as truth and truth is buried. I wanted to deliver that message through the film, as I recollected moments when I had been duped by lies."
The film shows how the characters deal with situations when facing trust issues.
"This is about young people in our society. They are anxious for various reasons. Unemployment, dating abuse, illegal filming, and things like that make them uneasy. In reality, fewer people trust each other as they get older," actress Moon So-ri said. "Trust can allow us to move forward in relationships and it is not about whether our counterpart is trustworthy or not. It's an issue of choice."
Lee Joo-young said she had to learn acting.
"Yoon-young is a character that interacts the most with other characters in the film. She interacts with doctors, her boyfriend, his ex-girlfriend and even catfish. I had to think about my acting whenever I dealt with different characters because they have a different impact on Yoon-young's thoughts and decisions," Lee said.
The actors and actresses said the unique personality of characters did not come from the acting but the style of the director.
"Yoon-young just has an ordinary state of mind. People may feel that she is unique because she reacts differently to different external circumstances. The circumstances could be a conversation between characters, a situation, or location," Lee said. "There would be no Yoon-young as it is now if there were no other characters."
The film is financed by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, and is also chosen as a notable independent film by a female director.
"Having said that I was chosen as the notable female director I realized how scarce female filmmaking talent is," Yi said. "It is only recently that such films have started to notice of the audience, and I hope this flow becomes a storm in film industry."
"Maggie" will be released on Sept. 26.
