Earth Finds Meaning in the Void
By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
An alien poet and his fellow extraterrestrial lover, along with his adulterous secret-agent wife and her boss-cum-boyfriend, become entangled in episodes involving dishwashing, assassination projects, romantic escapades and other thoroughly quotidian affairs.
In his latest feature "How to Live on Earth," indie filmmaker Ahn Seul-ki takes such outlandish premises to tell the story about a most proverbial household matter, the 30-something-year-old married couple dealing with ennui and the growing distance between them.
Ahn ventures into an experimentalism that appears to be a sharp turn away from his critically acclaimed drama about growing pains, "My Song Is…" If "My Song Is…" proceeds in andante, "Earth" rides upon a rather mind-boggling staccato rhythm with a surprisingly slow, meditative effect.
It speaks in a mish-mash of languages ― sci-fi, thriller, romance and comedy B-movies ― but the director still relies on his knack for communicating hushed, stifled emotions and subtle (as well as the not-so-subtle) dynamics of human relationships.
Having made its tour of international film events, from Busan and Barcelona to Syracuse, "Earth" offers muted metaphors that art-house cinemagoers may relish and more mainstream-oriented minds would find easy to ignore.
Yeon-woo (Park Byung-eun) is a poet and stay-at-home husband. He is bored ― the pupils of his unblinking eyes dilate lazily as he takes in the still life framed by the window, the tedious patterns of concrete apartment buildings.
"It's still Earth," he says to himself, not knowing where he comes from. His relationship with his civil servant wife Hae-rin (Cho Si-nae) is a strained one, as reflected by her concise, business-like post-it message saying she is off on a business trip. A pile of dirty dishes to wash and an application form for graduate school await him. He sighs.
But little does Yeon-woo know that his wife is a very special civil servant; she is a top secret agent who married him in order to observe him. Hae-rin feels guilty nevertheless, as she mixes business with pleasure on the trip with her boss and lover Han (Sun Woo).
One day a young woman with idiosyncratic charms, Se-a (Jang So-yeon), breaks the monotonous rhythm of Yeon-woo's life. They discover they are a common alien race and can communicate telepathically, and the two begin to share a heavily "nuanced" relationship.
Meanwhile, Han assigns Hae-rin her very first assassination project. (The movie keeps things thoroughly mocking of B-movies, and features Hae-rin tiptoeing around with a gun, donning a full-length leather jacket and sunglasses.)
Just when she is about to pull the trigger on the unsuspecting target, however, she realizes that the woman is none other than her husband's lover. Han explains that it was only a coincidence, and persuades her that it would be the perfect opportunity to resolve matters both for her job and marriage. Hae-rin, however, is not easily convinced, for she has learned to care too much for her fake marriage.
Cinema enables one to watch commonplace events from a third person's point of view, as an informed observer or distanced spectator, and this film takes such a notion to the extreme. The director attributes the cause of adultery to an external factor, including a villain who is responsible for all evil, to substantiate the inevitability of the affair.
But beneath the B-movie spoofs and surrealism the film seethes with a touching romanticism ― and "Earth" encourages viewers, not so much with tips on "how to live" but "how to endure," and find meaning or at least tolerance in the void.
In theaters Sept. 24. Distributed by Indiestory.