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[HanCinema's Film Review] "Unconfessional"

Byeong-cheon (played by Bae Sung-woo) is a film director who uses interviews as his preferred format for exploring the human condition. Byeong-cheon's questions tend to skew toward the weird and uncomfortable. This is good, sort of, in that such an interrogatory style can provoke honesty. But then it's also sadistic and destructive for the sake of being sadistic and destructive. Although really, what would we expect from a guy who owns a baseball bat yet no baseballs?

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"Unconfessional" is a tough movie to judge, because it falls into that awkward territory where I'm left wondering whether it's supposed to be a moderately clever satire of bad movies, or whether it's just a bad movie, full stop. Consider, for example, that Byeong-cheon is obviously not intended to be viewed sympathetically. Even when his erratic behavior regarding interviewee Se-yeong (played by Jeong Seong-il-I) turns out to be somewhat justified, Byeong-cheon still comes off as being, well, kind of a nut who fetishizes violence and probably sex.

I'm legitimately not sure whether writer/director Choi In-gyoo made "Unconfessional" as some kind of masochistic self-reproach, or whether it's a kind of passive-aggressive troll against his peers in the industry. Because look, honestly, when I first started getting into film I was all about the whole secret messages thing. But really, after a certain point, it's pretty hard to seriously argue that a bi-polar thug with a baseball bat represents anything more complicated than a bi-polar thug with a baseball bat.

Yet Byeong-cheon doesn't exactly work as a villain anyway, because as time goes on it's pretty clear that Se-yeong is also a bit of a jerk, just not in as overly complicated a way. One somewhat amusing scene by the end shows that Byeong-cheon kind of sees Se-yeong as being like a younger version of himself. Then Byeong-cheon realizes that he, too, is actually a pretty horrible person and that's no reason to treat Se-yeong with any degree of mercy.

And let's remember that these are the two characters who, by far, we spend the most time with. While Byeong-cheon's daughter Na-rae (played by Jung Min-gyul) does end up being kind of important to the motivation of both the male characters, she doesn't get a chance to actually do anything proactive in the story until right at the end. And Na-rae's role there is practically wish-fulfillment anyway, simply clarifying explicitly what the viewer has probably already inferred and tying up the remaining loose ends.

There is, perhaps, a sort of sadistic desire that might be satiated by watching "Unconfessional". As the theatrical poster demonstrates, both Byeong-cheon and Se-yeong are ultimately tied up, so to speak, by their own twisted psychosexual pathologies, regardless of which of the men has the upper physical or emotional power differential at any given moment. Yet I never quite hated either character enough to really be all that entertained by their humiliations, and the dark humor, while certainly weird, only real packs a punch in the immediate anecdotal sense. In the end "Unconfessional" overstays its welcome, and is worth watching as a novelty at best.

Review by William Schwartz

"Unconfessional" is directed by Choi In-gyoo and features Bae Sung-woo, Jeong Seong-il-I, Jung Min-gyul and Park Lydia.

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