In 1999, the blockbuster SHIRI dominated Korean screens, a signal of an increasingly big budget, Hollywood style popular Korean cinema that would become more and more prevalent over the next decade. But that same year, the artistically ambitious melodrama HAPPY END (literally HAE-PI EN-DEU in Korean, an example of an English expression that has infiltrated the Korean language) was the number 5 box office film amongst Korean releases, emphasizing the dual nature of the popular in Korean film at the time and a situation that still exists today. Korean cinema may have become (and continues becoming) more and more like Hollywood, but it also has a space for popular experiment that is almost non-existent within the top box office films of America. HAPPY END has provoked a great deal of discussion, both at the time of its release and in subsequent years. It is often seen as symbolic of a particular historical moment and as a reaction to the social anxieties of the time. The most thorough reading along these lines is by Kim Kyung Hyun in his study THE REMASCULINIZATION OF KOREAN CINEMA (2004). Kim’s overall thesis sees Korean colonialist history represented on screen by emasculated male characters, and that the subsequent empowerment imagined by the New Korean Cinema often takes the form of a return to masculine authority. This certainly works as a reading of HAPPY END. The lead male character, Min-ki (played against type by Choi Min-sik), is a banker who has recently lost his job, and his wife Bora (Jeon Do-yeon) supports him and their new-born infant by running an English language institute. She is also having an affair with her old boyfriend Il-beom (Joo Jin-mo). After Min-ki discovers this affair, as well as Bora’s drugging of their baby in order to leave to meet her lover, he plans an elaborate murder not unlike the plot of film noir: he murders Bora and frames Il-beom for the crime. He successfully enacts revenge on the fallen woman who has abandoned her “natural role” as a mother. Ironically, Bora is punished, and the punishment legitimated, because she is the stereotypical bad husband. Although, of course, if she were a man, the story would not be told, as Kim Kyung Hyun argues: “(E)ven though it is Bora’s masculine insensitivity toward domesticity that allows the film to later prepare us for her brutal death, had she been biologically male – with a penis – Bora’s death would not have been warranted. For then, most men would have to die for their insensitivity and for their failure to be good ‘mothers.’” (257)

Thus, it is easy to argue that this is a very misogynistic film, and it certainly plays to those with an anti-feminist slant. One of the more problematic shots for me occurs after the murder, when Min-ki finds a picture of Bora and starts sobbing. This reminded me of a discussion I had with fellow critic Jacob Worrell at this year’s Pusan festival about Ann Hui’s feminist drama NIGHT AND FOG. Like HAPPY END, NIGHT AND FOG shows the brutal stabbing of a wife by her husband. But the emphasis and sympathy are completely different. Jacob hated NIGHT AND FOG, calling it the worst film he saw at the festival, and he signaled out one shot of the husband glaring like an animal into the camera. He saw this as an ridiculous and over-the-top attempt to show his villainy. I certainly understand his misgivings, but I was more sympathetic to the shot because I sensed Hui’s motives were to reverse a whole history of films in which violent male characters are humanized and made sympathetic. In short, the melodramatic nature of that shot was an answer to scenes like the one in HAPPY END, where we are supposed to feel more sympathy for the murderer than the victim.

Although Kim Kyung Hyun emphasizes the specific post-IMF crisis trauma that HAPPY END is trying to negotiate, he does not discuss another aspect of this dynamic: the “other” as not only gendered, but also as non-Korean. This can be seen in a few obvious markers already mentioned; the ironic, English title, Hae-pi En-deu, as well as Bora’s job as the director of an English language institute. But it also plays out within the soundtrack of the film. During scenes between Bora and Il-beom, there is frequently English language music on the soundtrack. More specifically, it is often soul music, such as Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine” and Percy Sledge’s cover of the adultery anthem “The Dark End of the Street”. The connotations here speak to the often cited Korean xenophobia: the sexual affair being a Western corruption of the ideal Korean family. Thus, although Bora is not literally having an affair with a non-Korean (that would perhaps have been too scandalous for the time), the West nevertheless stands in for decadence.

All this being said, I believe HAPPY END is in fact a great piece of cinema, and although all of these ideological problems are present, it is more complicated than any kind of straightforward “cultural studies” reading would suggest. First of all, the film opens with an extended and explicit sex scene, probably one of the most explicit in Korean cinema at the time, especially for such a mainstream film with highly known stars. This depiction of sex in the film is partly spectacle, but it adds to the visceral impact. However much the ideology may be pulling the audience in one direction, director Chung Ji-woo is also giving expression to the passion of this affair. And, importantly, it is not only the female body on display, as actor Joo Jin-mo is equally and perhaps even more eroticized than actress Jeon Do-yeon.

Even the most damning moment of the film for Bora, when she gives her baby a sleeping pill, is treated with complexity, showing the horribly conflicted feelings of someone compulsively doing something they know is wrong. If Bora is indeed condemned by the narrative events, the dramatic weight of the film is nevertheless very balanced and much less simple than a summary of the plot would indicate.

Throughout the film, Chung’s visuals are both arresting and rich in meaning, portraying the social environment of these characters as a vast and complicated trap, against which the vibrancy of Bora and Il-beom’s relationship is extremely pronounced.

The conclusion is particularly complex and I would argue somewhat open-ended. After the murder, Min-ki returns to his apartment with his baby. He finds Bora’s picture and burns it. But after this, Chung inserts a brief and quite wonderful sequence in which Bora watches a balloon fly into the sky from their apartment window. We then return to Min-ki waking up next to his baby, at which point the film ends. This entire final sequence remains ambiguous. Is Min-ki dreaming about Bora’s return? Has he fantasized the whole incident of the murder? Indeed, how much of the tale is simply a story? After the opening sex scene, Chung cuts to Min-ki reading at a local bookstore. He is established as someone obsessed with stories: mystery and love stories, soap operas on television, etc. The film certainly leaves open a dream scenario, given how implausible the actual story is. In fact, Min-ki’s plot seems lifted from a mystery novel. This level of self-reflexivity complicates any simple verdict of the seemingly reactionary nature of the story. If the film is playing out male anxieties in the increasingly unstable modern world, it is also aware of the mythical place of storytelling in trying to deal with these fears. Furthermore, it is aware of the dreams and desires of the female character supposedly causing all of this instability. HAPPY END remains a troubling text, but also the work of a talented filmmaker, one who has unfortunately produced very little in the decade since this very accomplished feature debut.

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