Sang-hyun is a beloved and admired priest in a small town, who devotedly serves at a local hospital. He goes to Africa to volunteer as a test subject in an experiment to find a vaccine to the new deadly infectious disease caused by Emmanuel Virus (E.V.). During the experiment, he is infected by the E.V. and dies. But transfusion of some unidentified blood miraculously brings him back to life, and unbeknownst to him, it has also turned him into a vampire. After his return home, news of Sang-hyun’s recovery from E.V. spreads and people start believing he has the gift of healing and flock to receive his prayers. From those who come to him, Sang-hyun meets a childhood friend named Kang-woo and his wife Tae-ju. Sang-hyun is immediately drawn to Tae-ju. Tae-ju gets attracted to Sang-hyun, who now realizes he has turned into a vampire, and they begin a secret love affair. Sang-hyun asks Tae-ju to run away with him but she turns him down. Instead, she tries to involve Sang-hyun in a plot to kill Kang-woo… —Cannes Film Festival
A versatile stylist with an aesthetic that straddles the line between the idiosyncratic and the mainstream, Park Chan-wook is best known for his 2000 film Joint Security Area, a powerful story about a murder along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea that became the biggest box-office hit in the history of Korean cinema. (It was later supplanted by the action film Shiri, which also dealt with North-South relations.) Park’s interest in film began in college at Sogang University, where he started the “film gang” club and published a number of critical studies on contemporary cinema. After graduating from the Department of Philosophy, he began working in the film industry as an assistant director to Gwak Jae-young on A Sketch of a Rainy Day (1988). In 1992, he directed his first feature, The Moon Is…the Sun’s Dream, a gangster drama, and shifted gears into comedy with 1997’s Trio, a romp about three pals on the run from the law. Neither of these films gained much recognition… read more
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Sang-hyun, a priest working for a hospital, selflessly volunteers for a secret vaccine development project intended to eradicate a deadly virus. However, the virus eventually takes over the priest… read review
Le dernier film de Park Chan-wook évoque un vampire devenant amoureux d’une femme. Le postulat de départ peut être intéressant sauf que le cinéaste s’égare totalement au fur et à mesure que le film… read review
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