April Snow, petit bourgeon du printemps et miracle climatologique !
From French movie portal Comme au Cinema by Laurence Bergerhttp://www.commeaucinema.com/news.php3?nominfos=47585&Rub=Critiques
translated from french to english by camille
Snow in spring and a love which blossoms again
Hur jin-Ho likes the wavering of the break between seasons. Whether it is Christmas in August (his first feature film title was Christmas In August) or it snows at Easter, his cinema is impregnated by these climatic pertubations which, metaphorically, come to change the sentimental clock of people. April snow is a love story which should never arrive, but which occurs sometimes, like snow in April. Not with the sudden and brutal manner of a hurricane, but rather in the atmospheric depression of a cloudy sky. Two persons, which the fate link together beyond control, go towards each other, by slow steps. Their spouses were lovers, and following an accident, they are plunged in a deep coma. Between sorrow and suffering, anger and incomprehension, between a hotel room and a hospital corridor, this man and this woman will learn to know each other, to share their sadness, to link their forces, and to love in their turn.
Even if the lines seem drawn, Hur jin-Ho does not seek for melodrama at all costs. On the contrary, all is in the ellipse, the eclipse, the little variations of hearts which, in spite of their difficulties, will end up beating in unison. This love is contextual, out of season, it would probably never take place without the tragic event, come to change the meteorological report, and give the winter in the middle of spring. We think a lot of Hong Sang-soo’s cinema, another Korean film director attached to the seasonal fluctuations and their value delicately poetic (The woman is the future of the man, Tale of Cinema). We find there the same temperance of feelings, budding loves which take time to bloom in frost and coldness. An aerial lightness which embraces the weight of silences, the deep pains and the skinned alive.
This snow of April, enchanting and fleeting, is beautiful like a surprise we did not expect. It’s the rebirth of life after a mourning. A cottony bracket in a cursed sky. It falls in caressing snowflakes, brushes against faces and bodies in a forgetting whirl. Certainly, the movie is stretched a little too much on length and is hard to conclude, with repeated and endless ends. But, except this anesthetizing property which may make people who is not accustomed with it drowsy, this beautiful tale of love, snowy and springy, will not fail to move the sensitive hearts to the sibylline beauty of this Korean cinema which can reinvent stories already told. In this case, the impression of already seen is almost a quality...
From La Voix du Nord by Philippe LAGOUCHE
http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/loisirs/cinema/0406/125.phtml
translated from french to english by camille
Romantic South Korean
April Snow ***
WILL WE HAVE snow in April ? For her who loves spring so much, for him that only the winter delights, we should hope for it.
The silence is gold, words just express then evaporate, gazes start praying, movements are suspended, fractured... In spite of atmospheric whims and the risks of life, it is good to plunge in the Korean daily of an Hur Jin-Ho author and director of this movie (his third movie), all in pale lights and ivory faces.
Less talkative, less intellectual than the Woman is the future of the man of Hong Sang-soo, less sensual than Locataires of Kim Ki-duk, but on the other hand addressed to the intelligence, the sensitivity, the poetic and contemplative feeling of spectator having some other reference than television to go to movie theatres.
At the beginning, a man, a woman, two actors absolutely splendid. Meeting at the police station and at the hospital, at the bedside of their respective spouses, victims of a car accident. Find out stunned that the man and the woman today in the coma were lovers. So this man and this woman, thrown into confusion, torn between lost and anger will meet, share the same sorrows, the same torments, even more with time. Betrayal, confusion, despair.
An irrational and inconceivable love emerges at a moment we expect the least. Nothing heavy in this movie, all is in the behaviour, slow-paced shots, highly sensitive, in an economic way yearning for the purity of settings, the severity of a staging degreased of any residue, except a too intense musical partition. What could be more beautiful than a flutter of eyelash, a sketched gesture, a whisper, a short breath, what could be more eloquent, more restful especially face to the useless flows of words in the world.
April Snow, small bud of spring, fragile and precious thing to handle with precaution.
Une petite citation pour conclure
"A Noël je n'ai pas plus envie de rose que je ne voudrais de neige au printemps. J'aime chaque saison pour ce qu'elle apporte."
William Shakespeare
posted by Toujours_BYJ @ 5/12/2006 07:35:00 AM
4 Comments:
thanks camille!
i love the second review too, reminds me of how sensitive and how beautiful AS is.
camille,
Oh, these reviews are so poetic!
- owing to your beautiful translations of course!
It seems that these critics (?) have seen a substantial number of Korean films. It's good that the first one refers to the other movies by Dir Hur, I hope the French audience has a chance to see them because I love them both.
Thank you as always!
Hi bb, it seems that a lot of us love this great review.
Dear Flowerbossa, you make me blush, blush. Thank you for your kind words, yes I'm glad that almost every reviews're written in a poetic way.
In fact, some French critics already knew dir Hur because his first movie was presented at Cannes festival some years ago. It seems that One fine spring day will be released in August this year.
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