Film review: Obsessed tells of forbidden love in the South Korean army
With movies such as Forbidden Quest, a 2006 period drama about a scholar who writes erotic novels and becomes the lover of the reigning monarch's favourite concubine, and 1998's A Scandal, which centres on a woman who falls in love with her sister's fiancé, in director-scriptwriter Kim Dae-woo's filmography , a film such as Obsessed seems very much up his alley.
OBSESSED
Starring: Song Seung-heon, Lim Ji-yeon, Jo Yeo-jeong, On Joo-wan
Director: Kim Dae-woo
Category: III (Korean)
With movies such as Forbidden Quest, a 2006 period drama about a scholar who writes erotic novels and becomes the lover of the reigning monarch's favourite concubine, and 1998's A Scandal, which centres on a woman who falls in love with her sister's fiancé, in director-scriptwriter Kim Dae-woo's filmography , a film such as Obsessed seems very much up his alley.
So it's no surprise that its story unfolds so seamlessly, being marred only by a terribly hokey and unnecessary postscript that's out of step with the rest of the film.
Largely set in the summer of 1969, in a world that's a far cry from the swinging sixties, Obsessed tells the story of forbidden love in an isolated army camp in the verdant South Korean countryside.
Returning from Vietnam a war hero, Colonel Kim Jin-pyeong (Song Seung-heon) has been put in charge of training at the military base, where a strict social hierarchy prevails among the army wives, as well as within the uniformed ranks. Handsome, fit and immaculately turned out, he and his wife Sook-jin (Jo Yeo-jong) are high up on the totem pole, with added benefit coming from Sook-jin being the camp commandant's daughter.
