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| THE QUIET FAMILY. Starring - Park In-Hwan - Na Mun-Hee - Choi Min-Shik - Song Kang-Ho - Go Ho-Kyung. Director/Writer - Kim Ji-Woon. 1998. Tae Gu Kang and his family leave the city and set out on a family venture after Tae Gu manages to aqquire the Misty Inn Mountain lodge at a bargain price. Unfortunately things aren’t going to plan as the proposed new road up to the lodge is delayed and they are still waiting to welcome their first guest After nearly 2 weeks of waiting a stranger appears out of nowhere and requests a room. The family are only too glad to assist but things take a turn for the worse when the guest fails to show up for breakfast the next morning. Hastily they check on the guest only to discover him dead, but they can’t determine if he has been murdered or committed suicide. Tae Gu fears that the lodge will be closed if they report his death to the police, so they decide to bury him and tell no one. The next day a young couple arrives at the inn to partake in a sexual liaison, alas they too are found dead the next day after carrying out a suicide pact. Again the family decide their best course of action is to bury the bodies and say nothing. Pretty soon guests are dropping like flies as the family try to cover up their own misguided judgements, but bizarrely they are also getting really into it as they refine their disposal techniques. Billed as a ruthless comedy, the quiet family focuses on the Kang family and there attempts to run a successful mountain lodge. Individually the family is a strange bunch, but together they are quite simply unique. Forming a bizarrely adept bond when it comes to covering up the untimely deaths of their residents, with each family member excelling in their own little disposal methods. The quiet family is superbly cast with excellent performances throughout, no one cast member stands out from the rest as they all do their part in making this one of the better comedies I have seen this year. It is not in your face slapstick comedy neither, but more subtle and at times surreal comedy, for example how many times have you seen someone try and fold a dead body in half? Try and imagine The Texas chainsaw massacre on laughing gas and you are halfway there. The pacing of The quiet family is perfect, never really breaking into a sprint but instead opting to amble along pleasantly whilst taking in the sights, of which there are many. Director and writer Kim Ji-Woon has unleashed a wickedly entertaining and well shot film upon us, it is just a shame that very few people outside of Korea will ever even hear of it’s existence. Unfortunately not everything is perfect here though as once again we are treated to extremely lazy subtitles, whilst clean and easy to read they are half finished with dialogues untranslated and half finished, you tend to find yourself filling in the blanks. This doesn’t happen now and again but is more or less an ongoing feature throughout. Which is bloody annoying to say the least. I wonder how much the translators actually got paid for this half-arsed effort. I know I have said this before, but just when will Asian movie houses learn that a market does exist for them outside there own country. Nevertheless The quiet family intrigued and entertained me and I for one am looking forward to my next visit to the ‘Misty Inn’. 8********stars. |
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