Breath [Soom] (Ki-duk Kim, 2007)

[madali]

Breath [Soom] (Ki-duk Kim, 2007)

A man on death sentence. And a woman unhappily married to an inattentive, unfaithful husband. She decides to meet the man in prison. With her first visit, she wallpapers the meeting room with pictures representing spring, wearing spring outfit, and singing him a song. Her next visit, she does the theme for the next season, and so on, in a way, it is director's Ki-duk Kim season repeat from "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring".

Anyway, to make the love triangle more complicated, there is also a homosexual man in prison, that is in love with the man with the death sentence, and feels jealous.

And like most of Ki-duk Kim's films, specially a love triangle film like his "3-Iron", there is hardly any dialogue. But unlike that, it doesn't have a feel of a strong romance. In "Breath", I feel the woman's season themes to be silly, and frankly, a bit cruel in my mind. If I look at it logically, if I was on death row, and to be hanged within a month, the last thing I need is some woman to show me different seasons, and make me feel like I'm missing something. It would probably be better if someone came to meet me and wallpaper the wall with pictures of suffering and death, so I'd go, "Hey, whatever, might as well die". But then, I'm not on death row, so I don't know.

2/5

[X.]

I like how the poster is counting down Kim Ki-duk's movies. As if he is on death-row and we must number and cherish each film before his passage into the afterlife. (They do the same thing with Tarantino movies. In his case, there will be no afterlife. Only eternal damnation!).

[madali]

Yeah, the most useless marketing tactic ever. I mean, would a passerby go, "His 14th film!? I have to watch it!"