AN EXPERIENCE TO DIE FOR Review: A Blistering Erotic Thriller That Plays Up The Gender Dynamics With Gruesome Effect
Film history really is something you end up diving into, particularly if you’re like me and doing what I do on this platform. Kim Ki-young is only the latest auteur to come upon my radar in the course of my film consumption and writings, and the way his career pretty much ended feels almost as shocking and haunting as his final film.
The title in question, 1990’s An Experience To Die For, sits front and center of this critic’s perspective as the first of my intake of Kim’s work. The movie’s popularity has resurged since making headway in the last 30-plus years. Fans keen on the arthouse and foreign film arena can happily expect a rollout via Metrograph for both theatrical and streaming between May and June.
I went into this one completely blind, so I was pretty full up by the first twelve minutes or so. A lot happens in that time frame as we meet Myung-ja (Lee Tam-mi), who begins developing a chance friendship with Yuh-jung (Youn Yuh-jung). At this point, both women have already been through some unwelcome turmoil, especially Myung-ja who nearly falls prey to pickpocketing accusations by trampy malevolent bartender Gil-nyeo (Jo Ju-mi).
Things only get worse for Myung-ja though. Theft allegations aside, shifty insurance agent and husband Won-suk (Kim Byeong-hak) is hellbent on making an example out of Myung-ja by beating her in front of the in-laws and throwing down the divorce gaunlet for not bearing children sooner.
The impasse is only the first in a series of upending twists and reveals thanks to the resourceful Yuh-jung, unraveling a desperate plot between both women to somehow get even. The result leads to Myung-ja’s own horrific self-realizations about taking a life, amid a collaterally inclusive body count that now finds the beautiful damsel forced to uphold her end of a deadly bargain.
Par for the course here is the tragedy on which the stalemate between Yuh-jung and husband Hyun Gil-soo (Dong-shik) is foundated. There’s is a marriage with a precedent blurred by the misery they share in each other’s company. Neither of the two want to leave each other, but there’s no real road to any kind of liveable happiness and matrimony, which, sadly, is where Myung-ja comes in.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel “Strangers On A Train” and its 1951 Hitchcock-directed adaptation, An Experience To Die For is certainly one way to sum-up the core messaging culminated in Kim’s career exit. Genders are placed under a blaring and unforgiving binary microscope that paints mostly men as skivvy and cad-like, and women as deceitful and predatory. Won-suk and Gil-nyeo are the two biggest examples of this aspect explored in Kim’s film with at least one of the two meeting their fate in rather fatal fashion.
The final ploy finds Yuh-jung conspiring to do the unthinkable, using Myung-ja as a means to an end for her ill-fated marriage to Dong-shik, who until this point had been keeping tabs on Yuh-jung’s adulterous goings-on, even to the point of terrorizing her lovers. The big climatic finish weaves the final threat of a complex, dark and seedy revenge narrative that backfires, contributing to a cadence about as bleak as you can imagine for a film made at a time where certain dehumanizing norms would never pass muster today.
An Experience To Die For is the title for the film’s only reported second iteration for its treacherous journey to the screen – that is if the film’s Wikipedia page is anything to go by. The film’s presentation isn’t without its share of discernible flaws, like a dark nick in the lens in several of the shots near the end of the film. One scene where Yuh-jung is chasing a distraught Myung-ja through the halls of an apartment complex looks like it was shot with a peculiar lens you can still see.
There are a few more nitpicks I have in mind but they’re more on the creative and performance end of things. The more spectacular ends of the film are done with practicality befitting of the kind of golden-era filmmaking some cinephiles are used to. Otherwise carefully-crafted scenes of death, sex and gore are done brilliantly, and there’s no getting over how immersive and hypnotic some of the performances are.
Jo’s Gil-nyeo had me reeling at times. One scene sees her riding her john in cowgirl in public after scaring off a couple of would-be rapists by telling them she has AIDS. That she’s also a mother to three kids shes tries to groom to do evil shit when she’s not beating them to compensate for her inadequacies as a human being says plenty of just how much we can’t wait to see what happens next to her.
This is only after we find out her role in the chicanery she’s been busy on with that asshole, Won-suk. He fines Myung-ja $30 for being an embarrasment as she’s on her way to a driving lesson, divorces her as part of a devious scheme to meet his own ends, and spends most of the film trying to horndog his way back into Myung-ja’s life to the point of trying to force her to have intercourse. The end result of at least one instance will have you giggling with glee for Lee’s Myung-ja, and you can surely imagine the emotional weight and artistic gumption that comes with enduring the kind of nude scenes that would put censors in a chokehold, regardless of cinematic value and poise.
Central to the narrative is Yuh-jung, a woman scorned. She sleeps with whom she wants, whenever she wants. As for Dong-shik, the most he can do is say nothing to the matter while occasionally sitting idly by on the swing set in front of their home, wistfully waiting to see what Yuh-jung’s next move is. How this particular arc in An Experience To Die For concludes is a thing of morbid poetry.
Whatever the facts of the aftermath were to An Experience To Die For – or Be A Wicked Woman depending on your era of filmgoing or preferred title, it’s pretty clear Kim wanted to end on a high note. Typically known for horror and melodrama per his filmic caliber, Kim goes for the erotic, psychosexual and murderous jugular in his scuzzy final outing, lending something memorable to all around film convos.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
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May 9, 2024 @ 4:09 pm
[…] this film, my only diligence here extends to seeing Kim’s final film, An Experience To Die For, which definitely pushes the envelope a little more in comparison. It’s pretty mezmerizing to […]