FREE MAIDEN
Ja-yu-cheo-nyeo
Released: October 29, 1982
Republic of Korea
Shin Han Films Co., Ltd.

Directed by Kim Ki-young
Written by Lee Mun-wung
Producted by Jeong Do-hwan
Cinamatography by Jeong Pil-si
Art Direction by Lee Myoung-soo
Editing by Hyun Dong-choon
Lighting by Seo Byoung-Su
Music by Han Sang-ki

CAST
Ahn So-young
Shin Seong-il
Kim Won-seob
Cho Ju-mi
Han Woo-ri

The stirringly lovely Ahn So-young, star of the (very) soft-core hit film AEMA BUIN, plays a free-spirited young graduate student whose casual affairs with impressionable young men causes consternation among her colleagues. Motivated by a pursuit of commitment free-pleasure, So-young feels little guilt about bedding and forgetting a string of handsome beaus. Like the AEMA series, the model here would seem to be the European EMANUELLE films, with their schmaltzy, discofied ambience and (often hypocritical) free-love ethos. But FREE MAIDEN was directed by South Korea’s premier eccentric auteur Kim Ki-young and he takes this formula and curdles it, making a film that is riddled with his own bizarre obsessions.

So-young’s commitment-phobia is seriously tested for the first time by an older professor whom she feels sympathy for after learning of his recent suicide attempt. It seems the old doc can’t get it up anymore and has fallen prey to the depths of despair. His loving wife tries in vain to alleviate his impotency by all manner of oddball cures in an extended sequence that’s pure Kim. A bitter herbal broth chased by an assortment of multi-colored hard candies, pornography, dressing in a middle-eastern-y looking veil, hypnosis and finally standing him on his head and shaking his legs around vigorously. None of this works of course. If you’ve seen any of Kim’s other films like INSECT WOMAN or WOMAN OF FIRE I’m sure you can guess what eventually does cure his chronic erectile dysfunction. A chance encounter with So-young provides the opportunity for the professor to loosen (and stiffen) up but his despair seems too great and an initial seduction ends in failure. But while wandering an empty field at night our loveless doc (an entomologist obsessed by butterflies) is entranced when So-young hoists up the sides of her dress and flaps them around like an insect. The professor chases her with his butterfly net, catches her, tosses her to the ground, flings her legs apart and re-discovers his manhood. It’s another memorable scene that could only have sprung from the cracked imagination of Kim Ki-young.

An intense affair begins, despite the abject disapproval of So-young’s fellow students. So-young has finally learned how to feel real love. But soon enough it becomes apparent to the professor’s suffering wife what is going on. She takes legal recourse (it seems as though adultery is a serious civil offense in the Republic of Korea, or at least it was at this time), threatening suit and forcing So-young to sign papers forbidding her illicit affair with the older woman’s husband. Though crushed, she agrees, but attempts suicide by taking an overdose of pills. She survives, perhaps because the bottle of pills she swallows clearly states that they’re “Vitamin E” tablets (?!?!?). But passion cannot be denied and the professor seeks her out for one last rendezvous, which makes up the films climatic and best love scene, an intense and emotional love-making swathed in vibrant and cartoonish crimson lighting. It’s the only such scene the escapes either faux-Europorn cheesiness or the loopy almost by-the-numbers eccentricity of director Kim. It’s also the only time in this film or in any other South Korean movie I’ve seen of any sensual nature that comes close to matching the vivid intensity of the contemporaneous Japanese “Roman Pornos”. It’s a wonderful, galvanizing and even emotional sequence that should linger long in your memory. The movie just sort of winds down after that, having blown its stack, so to speak. There isn’t much to say about the conclusion, really. Everyone is back to square one and no-one gets a happy ending.

FREE MAIDEN was one of a number of cheap films Kim made during the late 70s through the middle-to-late 1980s which were intended to meet quota requirements imposed by the government on studios importing foreign films. Although intending to pump fresh blood into the increasingly moribund Korean film industry, the actual outcome were scores of zero-budgeted melodramas that for the most part did no favors to the often negative view that the international film scene held about movies made in the ROK. But there were some fascinating pictures that pulled through and are ripe for cult rediscovery, for example: oddball z-grade horrors like THE WHITE WOLF or VENGEFUL VAMPIRE GIRL, deranged gothics so cheap and bizarre they remind one of early 90s Pakistani horror/sleaze. Kim’s pictures from this era are also on the rise in cult circles, although they were first rediscovered by the iconoclastic Korean cinephiles that would eventually breed world class film-makers like Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook. Movies like this one or HUNTING FOR IDIOTS or the bizarre INSECT WOMAN redux CARNIVORE are captivating in a wayward, off-the-cuff manner that deftly showcase Kim’s truly original and obsessive style. He himself was highly dismissive of these films, noting “Those are sort of jokes in a way. I made them with no intention of creating a real piece of work … I made them hastily in a mood of self-mockery”. And while they are not nearly as “well-made” as his 1960s classics like THE HOUSEMAID or GORYEOJANG or as psychedelic and powerful as the 1970s efforts PROMISE OF THE FLESH or I-EO ISLAND, they are nonetheless fascinating examples of peculiar world exploitation cinema. They are easily comparable to wonderfully idiosyncratic works from Jess Franco or Jean Rollin from this same period in Europe or demented no-budget US horror flicks like BOARDINGHOUSE or THE JAR. Films that have sidestepped any normal mainstream mode of film-making and seem instead to have been shot straight out of the wild, fevered imaginations of the irresponsible auteur crafting them. MAIDEN, like any of the films mentioned above, is a very imperfect cinematic artifact but which is nonetheless deeply engrossing anyway, precisely because of these imperfections and not despite them.

The principal selling point of FREE MAIDEN is the wonderfully sultry presence of Ahn So-young. So-young was born in 1959 and made her first film, MU-RIM BATTLE, in 1978. But it was her title role in the “ero-movie” classic AEMA BUIN, released in early February 1982, which made her a star. That picture was an immediate hit and ushered in a brief golden era of softcore sex productions in the faltering South Korean film industry. It spawned no less than 10 sequels making it the longest lasting film series in Korean film history to this point, although only the first featured Ms. Ahn. Although ostensibly erotic, both AEMA and MAIDEN are rather chaste when compared to European or Japanese softcore movies from this same time, not to mention the increasingly profane hardcore productions from all over the decadent west. The nudity in AEMA was teasing only, no full frontal anything. The same can be said of MAIDEN although there are a few more instances of tit-flash than in its more successful predecessor. According to the Korean Film Database (more reliable by far than IMDB) So-young made 23 films between 1978 and 1995 when her filmography then goes mysteriously blank. It is unknown to me why So-young retired but one may gather that perhaps she married at this time and settled down into a traditional Korean lifestyle, which probably forbids a woman from working period, much less working in sexy movies. There is a rumor that at one time she lived in the US and had opened a restaurant but I could find no substantiation for this story. However So-young returned to film in 2007 with THE SUN TOLD ME TO …, a romantic drama.

To be fair, FREE MAIDEN is not as good as AEMA BUIN or any of the other Kim Ki-young films I have seen. Kim’s disinterest shows through in the movie’s many plodding dialog and expositionary scenes, which are shot with none of the passion and verve that highlights even the most trivial scenes in his 60s and 70s work. And excepting the gorgeous force of nature that is Ahn So-young, there are no other great performances here, only perfunctory ones. Still, there is enough of Kim’s eccentric stylistic tics and enough sensual allure to hold one’s interest throughout. And as Kim only made 34 films during his long career (several of his contemporaries made as many as twice that number) and as a significant number of those are now partially or wholly lost, any entry in his filmography is a must-view for his acolytes, for whom even the most lackluster film contributes an important piece of the puzzle to the understanding of this most obscure and uncanny auteur.

Special thanks to my friend Mathieu St-Pierre for his help researching this review. Check out his great review of AEMA BUIN here.

NEW TENANT (Hong Kong, 1995)
San fong haak (Cantonese)/ Xin fang ke (Mandarin)
“New Neighbor”
Universe Film Productions/Galaxy Films
Directed by Anthony Wong Chau-sang
Produced by Leung Hung-wah
Written by Lau Wing-kin, Leung Hung-wah, Anthony Wong Chau-sang
Cinematography by Tsang Chun-chung
Art Direction by Danny Yuen
Music by Raymond Wong Ying-wah
Cast:
Anthony Wong Chau-sang
Dolphin Chan Hoi-hang
Lawrence Ng Kai-wah
Dayo Wong Chi-wah
Parkman Wong Pak-man
Yip Wing-cho

With stomping Canto-metal blasting away on the soundtrack, the movie begins with actor/director Anthony Wong getting a haircut from UNTOLD STORY director Herman Yau made up like Paul Stanley from Kiss. It just gets weirder from there. It’s 1994 in Hong Kong and Wong is being discharged from a mental hospital. He claims he can no longer remember why he was originally admitted and therefore must be fully recovered. His doctor approves and, seemingly a bit of a Jesus freak, prays with him, and seems more mentally unstable than Wong does. Out on his own, our hero rents a flat in a building scheduled to be condemned in three months. Although he is the only current tenant he occasionally sees neighbors going in and out, only to later find their respective apartments empty, apparently for years. On his first night, he dreams (or does he?!?) that his face has become grotesquely disfigured and his hands have begun to stigmata. Rushing in a panic out his front door, he is confronted with the oppressive image of the hospital again, beckoning him to return. The following day, while sitting down to defecate, he is intruded upon by a rotund, mustachioed gentleman who, unable to see Wong already using the facilities, promptly whips it out and starts pissing directly on him. Blessedly, he disappears, but Wong is understandably upset and confused by this odd plot twist. Rushing into his living room he is astonished to find several people having a get-together in his apartment. They can neither see nor hear him. Anthony Wong, unsurprisingly, freaks out. These flashes continue and eventually he finds that one member of the household can at least hear him, a cute teenager improbably named Dolphin (also improbably the name of the actress playing the part and Wong’s girlfriend at the time). While in her room he happens to notice a calendar on the wall. He has suddenly found himself in 1984. Anthony Wong has become unstuck in time.

This brings us to the second act of the film, wherein Wong and Dolphin became acquainted and even sort of romantically involved. But soon enough the sinister strains of the first act begin to creep back in. Dolphin’s sister Whale (no really, that’s her name) goes missing soon after becoming engaged to the odd duck Anthropologist who lives downstairs (played by ubiquitous Category III leading man Lawrence Ng). Dolphin suspects that he has done something unspeakable to her, but really only because he makes weird noised at night that she hears through the ancient piping in their building. Dolphin and Wong sneak into his apartment one night to investigate and spy him opening a brief case and carefully inspect a mutilated canine inside. Convinced of his culpability, Wong checks in on the nutty professor back in 1994. He audits a class of his on the anthropology of human sacrifice. He speaks with unreserved passion about the cannibalization of loved ones in some “savage” societies, proclaiming the act to be the ultimate in intimacy. Confronting him afterwards the creep confesses to ritual murder and cannibalism of Whale and gives him a knowing look, perhaps somehow aware of Wong’s cross-time continuity. NEW TENANT spirals down from here into its unabashedly weird and incoherent climax. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I will tell you this about the end of the movie: It makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Which is OK with me, really. This is a most unusual HK flick to be sure. There aren’t many pulp films from the former British colony that are so damned confounding, save perhaps for Wong Kar-wai’s ASHES OF TIME, although NEW TENANT is nowhere near in the league of that masterpiece. There’s an odd, unsettling tone to parts of the film that are genuinely creepy as well as hints that there is something more complex going on in the narrative, although it never really leads anywhere. I suppose there is something here about the anxiety over the ’97 handover to mainland China, but that’s not all that clear to me. Despite these failures in plot and theme, NEW TENANT is compulsively watchable and fairly bewitching. It’s a unique beast for its time and place, with an arty and austere mood, blanketed with a dissonant unease that rubs against the grain of the more commonplace commercial HK fare. It also features one of the oddest soundtracks I’ve ever heard, with the aforementioned metal opening, a bizarre assortment of what sounds like Russian folk songs and one of the most improperly scored love scenes in recent memory. As Wong and Dolphin are finally able to see and feel each other and therefore get it on, a tinny, jaunty Casio keyboard ragtime ditty tinkles merrily and mysteriously in the background. Many scenes are attractively eerie, and the narrative confusion adds to the incipient mystery of the production, adding a layer of pleasing weirdness even as the story stumbles. But just as often jarring bathroom humor and a sappy romantic streak undercuts this uncanny ambiance, reminding you that no matter how weird it may be, this is still ostensibly a mainstream Hong Kong pop cinema artifact. NEW TENANT never really finds the correct balance for these disparate strains. Still, it’s well worth the effort to track it down.

Acclaimed character actor Anthony Wong is the complete auteur of NEW TENANT. As star, co-writer, and director, Wong is responsible for both its successes and failures. According to an article by Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover in the Fear Without Frontiers book he also contributed music to the film, but I can find no other references to this credit. Perhaps he is composer of the metal theme at the start of the picture? Born in 1961 to a Chinese mother and an absentee gweilo father, Wong grew up an outsider and this perspective has informed his work throughout his long career. He has starred in upwards of 160 films, many of them as unrepentant heavies in horror flicks and gangster movies. He is perhaps the former colony’s best actor of such roles, always almost scarily believable as he chews up the scenery and occasionally the other actors. NEW TENANT was his debut as writer and director with only one other film, TOP BANNANA CLUB, a romantic comedy of all things, in that capacity. NEW TENANT was made for pennies sometime in 1994/95, and took some time to actually be released. As befuddling as this film is to a western audience, the average HK ticket-buyer must have been even more confounded by the ambiguous plot. Ambiguity not being a common attribute of 80s/90s commercial films, it is not surprising that TENANT struggled to find an audience. It is reputed to be one of the lowest grossing movies made during that decade. It has even struggled to find a recent cult fan base in the west, despite the exploito fame of Wong, star of underground faves EBOLA SYNDROME and EROTIC GHOST STORY 2. Despite its many faults it deserves a wider audience than it has thus far received.



Texts consultated for this review:

Charles, John, The Hong Kong Filmography 1977-1997, McFarland & Co., 2000

Stokes, Lisa Odham and Hoover, Michael, "Enfant Terrible: the Terrible, Wonderful World of Anthony Wong", Fear Without Frontiers, FAB Press, 2003

Dannen, Fredric and Long, Barry, Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East, Hyperion/Miramax Books, 1997