Cannes. "Thirst"

By David Hudson on 05/15/2009

[Updated through 5/21]

"Emile Zola meets New Age vampirism in South Korean helmer Park Chan-wook's 'Thirst,' an overlong stygian comedy that badly needs a transfusion of genuine inspiration," writes Derek Elley in Variety. "Inspired by and following key plot elements in Zola's 19th-century novel of murder and adultery, 'Therese Raquin,' the two-hour-plus pic is slow to warm up and largely goes around in circles thereafter, with repetitive (and often plain goofy) jokes about hemoglobin lust and bone-crunching, sanguinary violence."

Mike D'Angelo, writing for the AV Club, finds the film "has no sense of rhythm or flow whatsoever. From the moment we first meet our tragic hero, a priest turned bloodsucker played by Song Kang-ho ([yesterday] was 'The Host' alumni day), 'Thirst' moves like it's just remembered the parking meter is about to expire ten blocks away and can't find anything but flip-flops to wear. New settings and characters are introduced so willy-nilly, and consecutive scenes have so little formal or tonal consistency, that you're generally floundering even as you're gasping."

"If you've ever watched 'True Blood,' you'll spot the similarities immediately," writes Charles Ealy at the Austin Movie Blog. "But this doesn't mean that 'Thirst' should be dismissed. It's quite stylistic, with the unmistakable imprint of an auteur. And it should find receptive audiences among those who liked 'Oldboy.'"

The Hollywood Reporter interviews Park.

Earlier: Darcy Paquet for Screen.

Updates: "Almost every movie of Park's I've seen includes sequences that seem like puzzling or downright boneheaded mistakes as you watch them, yet there'd be something wanting if he'd cut them beforehand," writes Tom Carson for GQ. "Maybe that's why keeping tabs on South Korea's greatest filmmaker sometimes seems like the closest I'll ever get to the cranky but dazzled way my 60s forebears used to keep tabs on Godard, which doesn't mean I think that Park and JLG are kindred spirits or equals in talent. It just means that if you haven't heard of one, you might as well never have heard of the other."

Cannes has video and audio from the press conference.

"[T]he movie turns into a kind of grisly screwball-love story between the priest and a demure housewife (Kim Ok-bin, called, more than once around town, the Korean Beyoncé)." The Boston Globe's Wesley Morris: "She's awakened first by plain-old lust, then by a lust for blood. Song and Kim are wonderful apart and together, licking and sucking each other's fingers and toes (accordingly, I'll salivate, on some future day, over how South Korea has some of Earth's best actors). They're doing 'Let the Wrong One in.' The movie contains its pleasures: it's kinky and crazy, perverse and perfectly shot, assembled, and staged.... Unfortunately, Park puts this energetic gorgeousness into what, for all its sex, comedy, visual ingenuity (his camera really can do anything), is still a vampire film. And vampire films by their very nature come with a set of guildelines that, to my disappointment, Park adheres to. This is a director who, even at his most problematic, does things his way. Here he's following rules he can bend but can't bring himself to break."

"With 'Let the Right One In' barely out of theaters, reminding us of the complex otherworldly bonds and deep romanticism of vampire lore, and Coppola's Cannes entry calling us back to the perfectly stylized genre of his 'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' Park's smug, unconscionable account of supremely stylized violence for the sake of love - in a movie unable to be romantic - is vacated of everything but sadism," writes Daniel Kasman in The Auteurs' Notebook.

"[D]espite AIDS and Catholic allegorizing, this overlong if intermittently comic gorefest is mainly about its rhapsodically staged pyrotechnics," blogs the Voice's J Hoberman.

"Park takes his famed eroticization of violence, pain and cruelty to new, feverish heights, and garnishes it with deliciously sadistic gallows humor," writes Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter. "Those who thrive on gore, twisted sexuality and brutish handling of women can drink their fill from this film. More serious arthouse critics, however, may balk at the script's soapy excesses, as well as the tonal discordance of yoking the horror-fantasy genre to a love tragedy with classical, literary trappings."

"If the Vatican is as interested in Tom Hanks's film as mine, I'd be thrilled." Brian Brooks reports in the press conference for indieWIRE.

Updates, 5/16: "'Thirst' is the first masterpiece of 2009," argues Blake Ethridge. "It's horrifies you one second, makes you laugh out loud the next and deeply moved in the next. The story is dark as hell and takes you to some dark places of the soul and existence but the way the story gets told never leaves you emotionally detached and never loses its tone."

"Its developments are impossible to predict, but that's because half are unnecessary," writes IFC's Alison Willmore. "The ramp up to Grand Guignol is a steep one, and 'Thirst' becomes just a stylish shriek in its final third. Stylish, at least, is something Park has always done well. Coherence and emotional appeal, less so."

Updates, 5/17: "On the plus side, 'Thirst' is indeed a truly original take on the vampire film from a true cinematic master blessed with a stellar cast," writes Todd Brown at Twitch. "Moments of undeniably brilliance are sprinkled throughout. On the negative side, early reports of extreme violence and extreme sexuality were grossly exaggerated - though both are present in a significant degree - leading to false expectations of the film while, more importantly, it also proves to be an over-long film plagued by frequent tonal shifts, particular ineffective forays into comedy, and some surprisingly poor work from the wire and CG crews responsible for the super-power vampire leaps. Unfortunately I must count myself on the negative side."

Not only is the film "horrifyingly funny," writes Patrick Z McGavin for Stop Smiling, but the "early scenes appear steeped in the religious cinema of Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer.... 'Thirst' satisfies on a direct, emotional level, bludgeoning the line between hallucination and reality. It certainly delivers the goods, but it's a soulful movie, built on ideas of absence and emotional vulnerability."

Update, 5/18: "Three days after the 'Thirst' screened, Park's gory, comic, ultimately moving mashup of 'The Diary of a Country Priest' and a sexier 'Dracula' was still the movie my colleagues were having the best time bickering about," notes Tom Carson at GQ. "So even though group interviews aren't my idea of a chance to probe, I naturally hied myself down the Croisette - Cannes-ese for what Americans would call 'the Boardwalk' - on Sunday afternoon to Park's press roundtable at the Mammon-love-it (God doesn't) Hotel Martinez."

Updates, 5/21: Scott Macaulay looks back over Park's career in FilmInFocus.

For the Wrap, Eric Kohn gets in on a roundtable interview with Park.

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "Thirst," Focus Features, 2009]

Tags: Cannes 2009, Kim Ok-bin, Korean Cinema, Park Chan-wook, Song Kang-ho