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Product Detail |
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Audio Format: DD 5.1 Surround, DD 2.0 Stereo Video Format: Standard 1.33:1 Languages: Korean Subtitles: English Region Code: ALL Year Made: 1996 Running Time: 94
 This Korean horror movie offers a feminist twist in that it centers on two female protagonists living next door to each other in a high rise apartment. The title refers to their respective apartment numbers. The story opens as one of the women, a compulsive cook, is being questioned about the mysterious disappearance of her neighbor, the other woman, a traumatized writer suffering from anorexia nervosa.
The two meet when the friendly cook tries to give the writer some of her newest creation. The writer later throws the food away. Still a friendship is born and as they converse, the tragic reasons for the writer's condition come to light. Dark secrets from the cook's past are also revealed. It is she who offers up the grisly final solution to the writer's guilt and continual pain.
Song-Hee Kang in 301 wants to introduce herself to her neighbour Yoon-Hee Kim in 302, and so cooks a delicious meal for her. But 302, buried in her paperwork, is not only even less open than her appartment, but, having taken 301's present, brings it straight back up again. Unsuspecting 301 happily prepares the most lavish meals for her neighbour, who cannot bring herself to smell or look at them, let alone eat them. When 301 discovers her food among 302's refuse, she is appalled, and forces 302 to eat it. Her lack of success gives rise to a feeling of hopelessness, until she discovers why 302 is unable to take any food. 302 gradually disappears, getting thinner and thinner. There seems to be only one more thing left to do...
Rarely has such a film succeeded in gripping its audience with such subtle means. When 302 finally unbends, and we discover her story, we wish 301 had not been so persistent. Now that we know the facts, we know that a solution is not going to be easy. Certainly, the drip, a course of therapy or a miraculous quick-cure through some nicely thought-out event would be possible. But (male) feminist Chul-Soo Park is no average director, and does not let his films get round the issue, as many others unthinkingly do (such as Antonia Bird with her Berlinale film, Priest, the year before in 1995). Consistantly, if horrifically, the Korean leads his film to its end, and for all who care to look beyond the superficial, one of the greatest romantics in film history reveals herself.
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