Review : Memento Mori, Tae-Yong Kim & Kyu-Dong Min, 1999

MEMENTO MORI

Original Title : Yeogo Goedam Ii

Directed by Tae-Yong Kim, Kyu-Dong Min

Written by Tae-Yong Kim, Kyu-Dong Min

With Min-sun Kim, Yeh-jin Park, Young-jin Lee, Jong-hak Baek

Year : 1999

Country : South Korea

Length : 98 min

Rating : 9 / 10

SYNOPSIS

Min-ah finds herself possessing a personal diary and becomes very quickly fascinated by reading it, when she find out, as the diary goes by, that two of her comrades who she thought were simple friends, really have a romance inside of the school. When one out of the two girls is found dead, in appearance victim of a suicide, gossips grow and Min-ah starts feeling a strange presence... the quiet college would transform into a morbid place, as if the words written in the personal diary, “memento mori” (“remember the deads”), came to reality...

REVIEW

Second opus of the "YEOGO GOEDAM" series, a year after the excellent Park Ki-Hyung's "WHISPERING CORRIDORS", "MEMENTO MORI" isn't really the direct following of the previous, but more of a variation on a common theme, being the deep and ambiguous relationships of two teenagers beyond death, which would also be the plot of Jae-Yeon Yun's "WISHING STAIRS", the third episode of the series released in 2003, and obviously of a lower lever than the two others.

This first movie written and directed by Tae-Yong Kim / Kyu-Dong Min is once again set in a strict and conformist universe of the Korean non-mixed college, putting us into a strange and dramatic love story between Hyo-sin and Shi-eun, two college students who would live, for a while, a passionate relationship, which would be discovered little by little by Min-ah when reading the personal diary of the two young girls. The first one, outcast and mysterious, would commit suicide for being rejected by the other who can't stand the relation that the previous has with one of the teachers... that's when the movie falls into a more unnatural dimension, going further than the other ghost story movies a priori of the same kind.

That's also where "MEMENTO MORI" gets away from "WHISPERING CORRIDORS", offering the viewer a more tragic and complex film than really fantasy, the whole thing dealing with a subject still much delicate in Korea, homosexuality, here beautifully dealt with. Homosexuality on one hand, but also teenage period and suicide, three themes playing on confusion and ambiguity, and which subtly denounces the persisting social problems in Korea... the discovery page by page of the diary, will lead us, by Min-ah's side, in a fascinating journey through the memories and the secrets of the couple, which will haunt the college to the end...

A first long-running movie full of poetry and mystery, magnificently interpreted and subtly directed, which may please less the horror fans than Asian movie fans in the Wong Kar Wai's style. A timeless masterpiece, dreamlike and bewitching which got an excellent welcoming when coming out in Korea, and got the best photography price at Slamdance Festival in 2001.

Note from Lan : 9 on 10

Published on 2005-05-04