Korean Wave star
Lee Seo-jin reminisces about his college days when acting in front of friends who were making amateur short films.
"I thought I would never choose acting for my career, but I slowly changed my mind after my friends told me I acted naturally while making short films", said Lee who studied business at New York University in the United States a decade ago, in an interview with The Korea Herald.
"I loved watching movies and was thinking about studying filmmaking when entering college because I had never imagined that I could become an actor", said Lee who faced great opposition over his chosen career from his family - said to have been engaged in the financial industry.
Lee still retains this image of nobility due to his background, but on the screen, he tries to be a completely different person.
Now 33, he has earned a reputation as an actor of versatility and intelligence who brings unusual subtlety and poignancy to his roles: a strong and tenacious detective who loves a female police inspector in the Joseon Dynasty while not saying a word to her in "
Damo"; a poor orphan abandoned by his lover but who secretly keeps his love for her in "Firebird" ("
Phoenix"); the lonely character, a 390 year-old vampire who falls in love with a high school girl in ...
MoreMin Byeong-Gook's new film explores the dark underpinnings of casual sex
Robert Joe (internews)
Mun Ho (
Jeong Chan), left, and Jong Gyu (
Kim Yoo-Seok) are fated to be part of a bizarre ménage-a-trois.
You're a stewardess on an airplane. A passenger casually lifts lint off of your backside in a forward manner and tells you you're very pretty. You embarrassedly thank him and run off.
You're eating your noodle lunch in a restaurant. The man at the table next to you suddenly moves over and strikes up a conversation. Within minutes, he's swiping bites out of your food as his friend chats you up. They seem nice, so what do you do? Why, have a ménage-a-trois with them in a sleazy love hotel, of course.
That illustrates the running theme of Min Byeong-Gook's "
Possible Changes": At any time, in any place, sex is imminent. What that sex stands for and how real it is, is where the film has its fun.
The two men from the hotel room tryst are Jong Gyu (
Kim Yoo-Seok), a shameless woman-obsessed lech, and his longtime alpha-male friend, Mun Ho (
Jeong Chan). A family man with a loving wife and child, Mun Ho has recently quit...
MoreCan we really change? Are we allowed to embrace changes in everyday life? Is there really a way out in this confusing era where morality, sexuality and values get entangled in a way that defies clear judgment calls?
"Possible Changes", released yesterday, tackles such bewildering questions by zooming in on the gloomy, lonely lives of two men. Notable is the opening scene where Moon-ho (
Jeong Chan) and Jong-kyu (
Kim Yoo-seok) sit on the edge of a cliff and watch the sea together.
It is relatively easy to see that the cliff symbolizes the precarious situations forcing modern (or postmodern) people to find some solutions. The sea, accordingly, points to the ideal possibility that can reshape their frustrating life.
Clear-cut interpretation, however, stops right there. From this point on, director
Min Byeong-kook, who had worked as an assistant director in the 1998 film "Power of Kangwon Province" with director
Hong Sang-soo, tells a puzzling story whose theme is deeply elusive.
Moon-ho and Jong-kyu are childhood friends. In their mid-thirties, they seem to have no clear direction in their life - except for a towering, un...
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