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Pierce Conran

3.5/5 stars
Lead cast: Lee Hanee, Bang Hyo-rin, Jin Seon-kyu, Cho Hyun-chul
During South Korea’s dark days of the early 1980s, a top star and a principled ingénue tussle with a chauvinistic producer and a stringent censorship system as they set out to make Korea’s first erotic film.
That is the premise of Aema, the small-screen debut of Believer director Lee Hae-young. The lively six-part period drama series stars Lee Hanee (The Fiery Priest) and newcomer Bang Hyo-rin.


Notably, Aema has stylistic and thematic shades of Kim Jee-woon’s film Cobweb, which was set against the backdrop of the equally censorship-prone 1970s Korean film industry, and Lee Won-suk’s cult comedy Killing Romance, which also starred Lee.
That said, there’s nothing small about this ravishing Netflix production, which imagines 1980s Korea as a smorgasbord of kaleidoscopic colours and fabulous fashion.
This is in stark contrast to how the era is usually depicted, with sober historical dramas like 12.12: The Day and 1987: When the Day Comes typically opting for thick shadows and muted palettes – even though both approaches are to exaggerate reality.
While political dramas typically drain the colour from the screen to match the country’s collective memory of the darkest era of South Korea’s modern history – the oppressive military government of Korea’s fifth president Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1988) – with Aema, Lee deliberately swings the other way.

Driving this show, beneath its vivid and voluptuous surface, is the suffering of those who had to pretend the hardest that nothing was wrong, those who hid their pain in plain sight, under cracked smiles and make-up: women.
The series is ostensibly a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Madame Aema, a 1982 box office sensation billed as Korea’s first erotic film and first midnight film, which topped the charts and went on to spawn 12 direct sequels and a further 16 spin-offs and reboots.
Madame Aema is a real film, but while Aema borrows some of its imagery – such as that of women riding horses, symbolic of them grabbing the reins of their desires – most of the details are entirely fictitious, including the characters, whose names you will not find in any Korean film history books.
Lee plays Jung Hee-ran, a huge star who rose to fame through the hostess films about bar girls and prostitutes that were popular in the 1970s, including Yeong-ja’s Heyday – a real film that actually starred Yeom Bok-sun.

After 10 years on screen, Hee-ran wants to move away from her image as a sex symbol, but shady producer Ku Jung-ho (Jin Seon-kyu, Revenant) has other ideas and, according to their contract, she still owes him one film.
Inspired by the recently formed Chun administration’s 3S Policy (screen, sex and sports), Jong-ho shoves a script for Madame Aema under Hee-ran’s nose, which he envisions as Korea’s first erotic film.
Hee-ran resists and Jung-ho decides to replace her by holding auditions to discover a new starlet. Meanwhile, he makes Hee-ran take on a supporting role intended to humiliate her.
Also clashing with Jung-ho is diffident director Kwak In-woo (Cho Hyun-chul, D.P.), who longs to make an art house film with subtle eroticism rather than the endless “bosoms” his loudmouth boss repeatedly clamours for.

Through the auditions, In-woo discovers Shin Ju-ae (Bang), an ambitious nightclub tap dancer who is willing to do anything for her shot at being on screen, including taking her clothes off for the camera.
Hee-ran is Ju-ae’s idol, but the veteran actress, insecure and furious at being sidelined, instantly gives the newcomer a hard time. Yet in an industry run by cretins like Jung-ho and strangled by even more vile men up the political totem pole, these women soon come to realise who their real enemies are.
Much like Lee Hae-young’s last film, Phantom, also starring Lee Hanee, Aema foregrounds women’s solidarity in a suffocatingly patriarchal society.
Transmuted through the filmmaking process, the on-screen sexual desire of Madame Aema’s protagonists becomes the desire for agency of the actresses portraying them.
Yet for all its progressive outlook, Aema is ironically rather conservative. In this story, all sexual desire is vilified and only one female character in the series has sex. She does so transactionally to further herself, and in the end, she is viciously punished for it.

The show posits that the Chun administration wielded sex as a tool to distract the masses, although it is not clear whether the 3S Policy ever actually existed.
Rather than historical veracity, Aema is more interested in crafting energetic vignettes. This leads to a series that is populated by caricatures and generalisations that sometimes undermine the central message about female solidarity.
Case in point, while Jin is a scream as the odious Jung-ho, when things get more serious later on, the brashness of his character feels at odds with the material.
Aema is a stylish and enjoyable affair, but it ultimately gallops off unbridled into a fantasy of its own making, its desires a little unclear.
Aema is streaming on Netflix.


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Lee Hanee and Bang Hyo-rin star in this Korean drama about the making of Korea’s first erotic film set against a stringent censorship system


Lee Hanee and Bang Hyo-rin star in this Korean drama about the making of Korea’s first erotic film set against a stringent censorship system.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lee Hanee and Bang Hyo-rin star in this Korean drama about the making of Korea’s first erotic film set against a stringent censorship system

Lee Hanee and Bang Hyo-rin star in this Korean drama about the making of Korea’s first erotic film set against a stringent censorship system