Lee Jang-ho's "Knee to Knee" presents a disturbing dichotomy of East and West. In the film, the East is seen purely as a victim, and the West only as a colonizer.
The east is portrayed in the form of a young Korean woman who was sexually molested as a child by her American tutor. The West, on the other hand, is a constant subject that seduces, enforces and threatens the East.
The story lays out this juxtaposition, relying mostly on the social mood of the early 1980s, when cultural trends like rock 'n' roll, MTV and the sexual revolution, which the film assumes are forms of "contamination" from the West, permeating the younger generation of Koreans.
Ja-young (Lee Bo-hee), a young flutist who was raised under a strict mother, sees sex as sinful. Yet she has a bizarre manifestation of sexual desire after her the trauma of being molested by her music tutor.
The film is obscure in depicting Ja-young's psychological state.
She tries leading a proper life, dating her demure classmate Jo ...|
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