He reluctantly spends the night in the town, in a wrong guest house, as it turns out. Next day, Hyuk-jin arrives at Jeongseon only to find himself stranded without his friends. During a drunken mash-up with his buddies, his best friend Ki-sang (Yook Sang-yup: are these actors' names for real?) invites him to stay at his relative's guest house (called "pension" in Korea) in the remote resort town of Jeongseon, Kangwon Province. Hyuk-jin (Song Sam-dong), a recent returnee from the military service, is a shy and soft-spoken twenty-something guy. Market share: Korean 48.8%, Imports 51.2% (nationwide)Įxports to other countries: US$14,122,143 (Japan: 42%)Īverage budget: 2.3bn won including 0.8bn p&a spendĬomplete List of 2009 Releases with Box-Office Data Reviewed below: Daytime Drinking(Feb 5) - Marine Boy(Feb 5) - The Naked Kitchen(Feb 5) - Handphone(Feb 19) - Private Eye(Apr 2) - Breathless(Apr 10) - Thirst(Apr 30) - Like You Know It All(May 14) - Castaway on the Moon(May 14) - Mother(May 28) - A Blood Pledge(Jun 18) - Bandhobi(Jun 25) - Chaw(Jul 15) - Haeundae(Jul 22) - Possessed(Aug 12) - The Pot(Aug 20) - Treeless Mountain(Aug 27) - Let the Blue River Run(Oct 8) - Paju(Oct 28) - A Brand New Life(Oct 29) - Lost in the Mountains(Nov 12) - The Actresses(Dec 10) - Woochi(Dec 23). Most astounding, however, was the smashing success of the low budget documentary Old Partner, about an elderly farmer and his cow, which as of May 1 was the best grossing film of the year with close to 3 million tickets sold. Daytime Drinking and Breathless, two debut films shot on tiny budgets, earned critical praise and an encouraging degree of commercial success. Surprisingly, low budget independent films were also showing considerable life in the midst of the crisis.
All three films would be invited to various sections of Cannes. Hong Sang-soo also turned in a new film Like You Know It All, shot for a tiny fraction of his usual budget. In better shape were Korea's internationally-recognized directors, with both Park Chan-wook ( Thirst) and Bong Joon-ho ( Mother) lining up high profile spring releases. The situation was particularly tough for mid-sized, genre-based commercial films, which in the previous few years had lost money for more often than they had earned it.
With a global financial crisis exacerbating a two-year old crisis in the Korean film industry, expectations for the year were low. The year 2009 opened in difficult circumstances, to say the least. "Haeundae", "Thirst", "Mother", "Breathless"
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