The Isle (2000)

Editor's Note: This is a review of the unrated international release, which runs 90 minutes.

Brutal and beguiling, Korean cult director Kim Ki-duk’s The Isle is a fractured fairytale about guilt, jealousy and tortured love. Like Takashi Miike’s movie Audition, this atmospheric and eclectic Korean movie crosses several borders as it tells a simple, straightforward and macabre love story in an offbeat and arthousey mix of love, character study and horror with a dose of intense gruesomeness. Hee-jin (Jung Suh) is a mute woman whose job is ferrying men to and from the floating huts on a huge, picturesque lake in an old motorboat. Most of them are out there to fish, and Hee-jin also provides passage for local prostitutes who offer company for the men while they wait for their bait to catch. Occupying one platform is Hyun-shik (Kim Yoo-suk), a suicidal fugitive with whom she forms a silent, violent relationship. Their dysfunctional bond is the basis for this beautiful and disturbing film.

Nothing much happens for about the first half of the movie. Hee-jin does her job and watches Hyun-shik from a distance, breaking up her routine by alternatively sleeping with the fishermen or freaking them out by swimming underwater, pulling them into the lake and jabbing them with a blade. Kim Ki-duk records this beautifully, catching the light as it bounces off the water and the fog as it rolls towards the shore in hypnotic long shots. Trouble starts when Hee-jin visits Hyun-shik and he tries to force himself on her –- she flees, and he orders one of the prostitutes instead. Unexpectedly, this girl is genuinely attracted to him, thus fuelling Hee-jin's jealous obsession.

Kim never speeds up the steady pace, but eventually injects some well-timed shocks. Hee-jin appears suddenly through the trap door in Hyun-shik's hut as he’s making out with a prostitute, a bound and gagged girl tumbles fatally into the lake, and there's a truly gut-wrenching sequence in which a bunch of fish-hooks is swallowed and pulled back up again. The characters of The Isle are unable to verbally express their pain; Hee-jin is mute, Hyun-shik barely speaks either, and their extreme behavior seems be a cry for help. Moreover, Kim mirrors their state by unflinchingly showing the killing and mutilation of animals. Such scenes are unpleasant but, much unlike the gratuitous animal cruelty in Italian cannibal shockers, they serve a distinct narrative purpose here. Violence in The Isle has inevitable consequences, leaving physical and emotional scars.

The movie is a delicate, brooding exploration of the nature of obsessive love and its potentially damaging consequences. Both Hyun-shik and Hee-jin are characters craving love, yet shunning it when it comes to them, deeply aware of the destructive qualities it brings out in them. Jung Suh is a revelation in her first leading role as the mute Hee-jin, imbuing her character with volumes of captivating intricacies through mere expression. What this young woman achieves with her eyes alone is much more than many seasoned actors will accomplish with a resume of their life's works. Kim engages her as his focal point for the viewer, hinting at her darker leanings while at the same time evoking heavy empathy for her. Additionally, her desire for a man in her life is played as painfully real as it can get. The titular Isle refers to Kim's symbolic gravitation that the sexes lay upon each other, each seeking their own retreat from themselves, only to end up becoming a castaway.

Juxtaposed against this moving portrayal of lost souls searching for love that will free them from the mundane in their lives, Kim crafts exquisite visuals. Daybreaks are captured in their first morning beauty, ethereal fog shrouds the lake creating an otherworldly landscape, underwater photography is murky and refreshingly lifelike. Hwang Suh-shik's cinematography captures the visuals that set Kim's horror love story apart from other movies with eloquent style. Dialogue and music is sparse throughout, yet Jun Sang-Yun's score conjures a magical soul for Kim's moving script. It’s minimalist, piano and keyboard-strings driven, yet warm and profoundly touching.

The evocative images and gentle, lapping rhythms of this movie are quite infectious. It gets under the skin and draws the viewer in long before the plot kicks into gear. It also makes us think about issues of attraction and isolation, even as it attacks and offends virtually every sense with its continuous gruesomeness and repetitive images of pain and mutilation. This movie is not for the squeamish, feminists, the politically correct, or animal activists (as fish, frogs and birds are all killed on screen, often in brutal ways). The damage to the human characters is even worse; although not quite as explicit, it's much more horrific. But the increasingly creepy plot is counterbalanced by a genuinely tender romance, which actually makes the film impossible to really categorize in any genre. All you horror addicts who get their fixes from your local arthouses will find this extraordinary movie extremely rewarding. In fact, my guess is that anyone with the stomach to appreciate anything other than the umpteenth rendition of your mainstream sequel or remake and who doesn’t morally or otherwise object to what is offered here should give The Isle a chance. It’s a gem.