THE HOST (GWOEMUL)

NARRATIVE, South Korea, 2006, 119 minutes; in Korean with English subtitles

Director/Writer: Bong Joon-ho
Producer: Choi Yong-bae
Production Designer: Seong-hie Ryu

A monster emerges from the Han River in Seoul, following a U.S. doctor's dumping of chemicals into the waterway. The mutated creature, an Alien-sized tadpole as agile on land as in the water, kills many beachgoers, then nabs a young girl and carries her off. In the ensuing panic, the government takes its focus off capturing the monster and, instead, enforces round-ups and quarantines of innocent by-standers, fearing that they have contracted a deadly virus. The girl's wildly dysfunctional family must undertake the dangerous mission to rescue her. Allegories abound in Korea's biggest box office and critical success. Director/writer Bong Joon-Ho (who some are calling his country's Steven Spielberg) binds genre elements to rich, appealing depictions of working class people. Smart, touching, funny, and scary, The Host is a hybrid in more ways than one. The spiffy visual effects were provided by the San Francisco company The Orphanage, and supervised by Hollywood ace Kevin Rafferty. (Amy Taubin)

· 2006 CANNES Film Festival: Directors’ Fortnight
· Toronto Film Festival: Official Selection
· New York Film Festival: Official Selection

RYU Seong-hee has created a distinctive look and atmosphere for MEMORIES OF MURDER, OLD BOY and A BITTERSWEET LIFE. She has been paid the ultimate compliment for a technical staff member: her designs have been described as being as essential to the movies as their main characters. RYU claims that she always agonizes over the borderline between reality and fantasy. She has seized upon THE HOST as her perfect chance to depict the tensions generated by the strange, phantasmagorical presence of the Creature amidst the very realistic and mundane space of contemporary Seoul.