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Also overlooked by the fest audience, Oasis (which like Gayle Lake I caught at last year's Pusan International Film Festival) which won Best film at last year's Venice Film Festival. Co-produced by the Pusan International Film Festival's international programmer Jay Jeon (who in his role as international man of mystery - even the Koreans find him inscrutable - was actually attending the Sydney Film festival with a degree of anonymity),
Oasis looked set up to be a maudlin film about a demented prison recidivist who attempts to rape, falls in love with and successfully woos a woman with extreme cerebal palsy. Fortunately,
Oasis developed well beyond its sentimental premise and really hits it stride with an unexpected, but in retrospect completely logical plot development on the cusp of its third act.
Oasis was decidely un-PC in its use of able-bodied actress So-ri Moon in the starring role. The fantasy sequences where the character's inner-beauty is revealed by having the actress perform without physical impairment were emotionally striking, but were considered by some to be politically suspect. But that said,
Oasis is reminiscent of the finest moments of Heather Rose's
Dance Me To My Song and certainly a far more superior film overall.
While Jay did not present his film to the Sydney audience, he did act as a kind of guardian for
Road Movie's director Kim In-sik who also visited with a considerable entourage.
Road Movie a rather disappointing self-explanatory titled film which kicks off with a full on gay sex scene. The rest is an express train to nowhere including a rather startling karaoke scene for the more heterosexually concerned. While such naked antics might knock the socks off your more sheltered Koreans, really this is just shock politics for the film festival circuit. Given the fest's other adventures with the now banned
Ken Park indicates that we are not even immune to this in Australia, of the range of Korean films available, this seems a disappointing and misguided choice.
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