The Quiet Family

This is the story about a family that takes over a hotel in the outskirts of Seoul. Business is slow, and when the guests finally come, they die under mysterious circumstances. The dedicated father refuses to give up his plans, and he buries the bod ies rather than risks the future of the hotel. More people come, and the complications get bigger as the pile of bodies grows.
During the opening titles of the film, we follow a camera that travels through the hotel, Mt. Lodge, which is the center of the film. The travelling camera sneaks around, searching, precisely the kind of spooky camera movements that have been impossible to make since 1980 without the spectators associating it with Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. These thoughts could have been associated with this scene as well, if it was not for the fact that in th is fi I m it was scored by hot hip-hop.
This first premonition of the film is significant to that degree that it is precisely in such absurd combinations, that Kim Ji-Woos debut feature has its strength. The story is simple, if slightly twisted, but the film still manages to slink out of any attempt to classify it based on genre. It becomes a game with ones
expectations and feelings that often surprices the spectator, and the shifts between the truly horrible and a macabre sense of humor, are so fast that the laughter often gets stuck in one's throat.
The film is of the unusual kind coming from Korea, where they mostly produce soap-operas, comedies and action movies, but one rarely feels left out, because of cultural differences, as a westerner. The film is more like an indication of the unexpected combinations that can occur between two cultures. This is underscored, not least by the music in the film, which ranges from above mentioned rap to Shubert to Stray Cats.
BJÖRN LEKSELIUS

Premiärstatus
Internationell premiär: Medverkande
Lee, Yoon-Sung,Song Kang-Ho: Producent
Lee Ean,Mi-Yeon Lee: Manus
Kim, Ji-Wook: Foto
Gwang-Suk Jung: Musik
Young-Wook Cho: Talat språk
Korean