On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate

The turning gate in 2002’s Turning Gate is a mythical-icon-turned-tourist-landmark, which doesn’t itself turn, but imposes fear upon those too reluctant to pass by it, and makes them head back home. Fledgling actor Kyung-soo (Kim Sang-kyung) yawns the myth off upon hearing it from buddy Sung-woo (Kim Hak-sun) on a ferry boat to the gate. But as a narrative pattern develops, the tale is evidently no joke: Kyung-soo romances needy dance instructor Myung-suk (Ye Ji-won), retreats, romances sheltered housewife Sun-young (Chu Sang-mi), and finally retreats. Indeed, the film tackles how we absorb art and experience, and how both are bound to resurface so long as we contemplate them; by the film’s end, whether we consider Kyung-soo a progressively coarse asshole or a sympathetically calloused loser-in-love depends on whether we blame the man, or his colorful history. Hong again utilizes the chapter structure of Virgin, this time foretelling what’s to come with seemingly straightforward summaries. However, when a chapter is titled e.g., “Kyung-soo has a quarrel with a director,” the quarrel in question begins and ends amicably, and the suggestion that “Kyung-soo is reminded of the Turning Gate’s snake” is so decidedly psychological that a search for the precise moment the snake pops into Kyung-soo’s head would yield at least three matches within. The story continually resists encapsulation, and one senses that’s Hong’s perverse reason for supplying it. Only such a blatantly inadequate narrative framework could draw complete attention to the film’s nuanced, elegant style.

Working again in color, Hong concentrates his energy on palpable compositions that interact with our perceptions of the drama. Naturalistic as Turning Gate may seem, Hong’s methods are systematic: the more emotional turmoil bound to spill over, the more Hong inhibits identification. At the height of Myung-suk’s depression and Kyung-soo’s vendetta against her, he offers her a slight goodbye without even a hug, and quickly heads for the bus. The scene is shot from behind Myung-suk, so even as we’re readily prepared for her to freak out, we aren’t allowed to witness it; the scene derives high emotional tension from the power of assumption. Additionally, with Turning Gate Hong starts to find ways to work conventions into his work and use his aesthetic to subvert them—see Kyung-soo chatting with a little girl of Dakota Fanning-esque precocity only for her to be injured in excruciating detail, one shot later; or Kyung-soo and Sung-woo chatting about a college girl in the distance, followed by a reaction shot of her looking back, possibly interested, mostly trying to appear distracted; we never see her again. In a lesser film, the little girl would become a companion, and the college girl a conversation, if not a girlfriend. Hong flirts with convention, and then crushes it with the suddenness of life. —http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/lets-not-turn-into-monsters-okay-the-films-of-hong-sang-soo.htm