Park Chul-Soo Movies

Veteran South Korean director Park Chul-soo (301/302) wrote and directed the erotic drama Green Chair. Seoh Jung (The Isle) stars as Kim Moon-hee, an older woman who has just been released from police custody for deflowering an underage young man, Hyun (newcomer Shim Ji-ho). (In South Korea, the age of sexual consent is 20, and Hyun is only 19.) Upon her release, Moon-hee is surprised when Hyun shows up and spirits her away from eager reporters. Dodging a prying reporter and staying out of sight, Moon-hee and Hyun go to a motel, where they continue their torrid affair. Moon-hee thinks Hyun is only interested in sex, so she breaks up with him, and goes to stay with her friend, Jean (Oh Yun-hong). She's heartbroken that Hyun didn't try to get her to stay, but she soon learns that he has followed her. The couple stays with Jean, who seems to share Moon-hee's attraction to the handsome young man. Moon-hee fulfills her community service (part of her sentence) by caring for senior citizens in a rest home. The two struggle through their challenging relationship, dealing with Hyun's immaturity and Moon-hee's insecurity. With Hyun's 20th birthday approaching, they plan a big dinner party, inviting everyone who's had a recent impact on their lives. Green Chair was shown at the 2005 edition of the New York Asian Film Festival, presented by Subway Cinema. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Alcoholic sushi-chef Park Bong-ja (Seo Kap-suk) returns to her apartment one night to find a strange girl (Kim Jin-ah) asleep in her bed. The girl, it turns out, is a homeless teenage hooker, and her lack of social standing, similar to Bong-ja's, paves the way for an intimate relationship between the two women. Their relationship enables Bong-ja to release many years' worth of pent-up emotions, while the young prostitute reveals the dark secrets of her past. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

Director Park Chul-Soo combined comedy with social comment for this South Korean film set in a large city at the obstetrics ward of a clinic run by women (Hwang Shin-Hye, Bang Eun-Jin) for women. Teen mothers, peasants, career women, and husbands bring up various issues and topics, while a real birth is interpolated into the fictional storyline. Shown at the 1997 Vancouver Film Festival and the 1998 Berlin Film festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This Korean horror movie offers a feminist twist in that it centers on two female protagonists living next door to each other in a high-rise apartment building. The title refers to their respective apartment numbers. The story opens as one of the women, a compulsive cook, is being questioned about the mysterious disappearance of her neighbor, the other woman, a traumatized writer suffering from anorexia nervosa. The two meet when the friendly cook tries to give the writer some of her newest creation. The writer later throws the food away. Still, a friendship is born, and as they converse, the tragic reasons for the writer's condition come to light. Dark secrets from the cook's past are also revealed. It is she who offers up the grisly final solution to the writer's guilt and continual pain. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi