Hey guys, a friend of mine recommended the korean movie Concubine of King and I thought i give it a shot. The movie contains a lot of sex scenes and what you get to see is comparable to any softporn. So I wasn’t sure if this movie is really good. Usually movies which contain erotic of this level are low budget productions and I thought this is another one. I was mistaken (again). The movie is high-class and is anything but trashy which amazed me. But there is one thing which confuses me I thought established actresses with a good carrier wouldn’t play such a role. I mean you get to see Jo Yeo Jung stark naked (which isn’t bad - she is beautiful). But then I found out that she starred in similar roles before (including being naked - “The Servant”)
“The film proved her fine taste in roles when, despite the hype, it was well-made and critically praised. Jo says that most of all, she wants to be seen as an adventurous and intriguing actress.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Yeo-jeong
Now I want to write something about the story. It’s basically about a king who has no say. The King is in love with the queen who was married to his brother (who was poisoned) But the queen is in love with someone else. A love triangle comes into being. The story is anything but innovative. I’m certain there are at least 20 movies with a similar story line. Just the end of the movie confuses me (the last scene). I’m sure everyone who watched this movie knows what I mean.
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Watch this when your tv watching is dry and you are suddenly consumed by curiosity.
I love anything to do with Asian royal courts so when I saw the title of the movie : I was in.The story is interesting and makes a fascinating watch. The reason why I rate a seven is simply because it was obviously ostenstatious and was super determined to prove a point. One can tell that the writers wrote this out to prove some sort of point and that’s annoying and quite frankly lazy. Good stories do not need to be backed up by the narrator or the maker but they just simply tell their stories without forcing the viewers to feel a certain way.
However - I was successfully pulled along in aghast and shock and did not think for a minute to hit stop and do something else. Instead I was thinking the following; “woah- really?” “This is quite pornagraphic - is this allowed?” “ What the ...?” In my book that counts for something and that’s why it doesn’t score a flat 5.
Moreover -I felt manipulated in my discernment of the plot that I wasn’t sure if my thoughts were really my own as this movie made it it’s mission to control every reaction.
Acting :Kim Min Joon was good because his portrayal of Kwon Yoo was not so concentrated but rather muted and subtle which was a breath of fresh air in the heady 2hrs. Cho Yeo jeong was such an obvious tool in the ostentatious production . She was way too obedient to whoever the director was , much to her shortcoming. The rest of the cast just fade out quite frankly.
Music was dramatic and tense and so was the cinematography. It really aided the curious intentions of the production. Solid 8.
As for rewatching- I don’t need to rewatch this and neither should you. Like I said in the headline : Watch this when your tv watching is dry and you are suddenly consumed by curiosity.
Overall - meh. The shock factor just became blah but that finale scene really was something! Kudos to Cho Yeo Jeong for that seriously crazy last scene !
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this was the freaking bomb!! freaking roller coaster seeing each turn and twist this story took - loved it!!i so get Hwa-Yun she didn't want any of it, and she is the one that survived, pretty awesome. love strong female characters, and as much as the men r dangerous and manipulate, u just don't f*ck with women. pretty bad-ass.
period pieces r intriguing as is, but the complexity and how freaking hard everyone had it just adds that extra bit of kick to any story. add the love story and how that ended, sprinkle in unrequited love and on and on with everyone adding their own personal agenda to the plot, and how can u not love it?!?
...and anyone going on about "boo hoo why did she have to kill King Seong Won, cause he was really infatuated/in-love/lust with her. and she could've lived happily ever after..." - be dreaming. given the court-politics and backstabbing going on, sooner rather than later she and more importantly her son, would lose their lives. the fact that the King wanted/loved her didn't mean sh*t - she was still his sister-in-law and with no real power. pretty sure he couldn't make her his queen, one which he already had...
and unlike his mother, who may have started her plot with the objective of securing the crown and safety for her son, once she poisoned her, Step-son the reigning King - she got power hungry.
what Hwa-yun did was so she could survive and safeguarded her son, guess that's why she has a terrified look on her face at the end, cause now that she achieved monetary safety... wtf now is waiting around the corner - was what the look on her face "said".
phenomenal acting, and story - wholeheartedly recommend.
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Why did I watch this?!
I did not enjoy this movie. I was very intrigued by the description which makes the movie sound like something it just wasn't. I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you are a fan of the actors and you're willing to support them through tedious plots and bad narratives.This movie fails in my opinion, not by being fundamentally a bad concept but somewhere in post-production something went wrong. The editing of this movie is tragic but I can't even blame the editor because the plot is complicated and the movie is trying to be so many different things at once that it fails to truly master any of its concepts perfectly. The cuts are jumpy, it goes from one scene to another without any logical connection or flow. It's just like separate paragraphs cut and pasted together. This makes the movie disjointed and messy. Mainly the issue is that the movie was trying to be an arthouse aesthetic movie, palace intrigue movie, erotic obsession movie, a commentary on power and corruption, and a revenge plot all at once and each of these would have made a good movie if they had just focused on one thing and centered the plot around that but no, they had to do it all at once and it made no sense. There were also some very questionable cinematography choices, and I wouldn't bring something like this up if they weren't so bizarre that it actually affected my enjoyment of the story. Some scenes have gorgeous framing and very symmetrical setting but then sometimes the camera is on the wrong person during conversations and it just really ruined the emotional impact of the scene. (Like when the king accuses his mother of attempting to kill the king and when he does this, we don't see her reaction and there's just this awkward silence before she starts talking and it's so wrong because I'm pretty sure the actress was acting her heart out for the reaction they didn't show!)
Obviously, the script had major issues. As I said, it had too many complicated plotlines that all get the bare minimum effort put into them and so they're all so cliche and disjointed. This also means that the characters don't get enough space to be developed. Especially the two mains; THE concubine and her former lover. Both are such cardboard characters with so little time put in actually developing any personality or clear motivation for them that they are as unknown and one-dimensional at the start as they are at the end. Also, the lover was barely in the movie, he was so pointless and he honestly didn't deserve any of the things that were done to him. I think the writer should pay for emotional damage to their own character!!!!! The king gets a better development though it could've been better? Like I said: the bare minimum.
What was good in the movie was the set design, the aesthetic they were going for, and the choreography. The movie looks pretty? They do try to make it look smarter than it is (and what it was, was just softcore p*rn barely masquerading as a historical drama) but it was such a wasted effort. I don't remember the music so I'm thinking it was either so good it became invisible or so inconsequential that I didn't remember any of it.
The acting...could've been better? Some parts were overacted in my opinion. Others seemed confused about what they had to go for, so they just went with blank stoicism, which might be to some viewers' preference but I only like stoic performances if the eyes can communicate the deep emotions and there was none of that here. I don't blame the actors though, they were hardly given anything to work with.
Lastly, what I just hated about this movie were the excessive, gratuitous, pointless sex scenes that were very explicit and numerous, and maybe if they had made those a little more tasteful and MUCH shorter, there would've been more time to develop an actual plot for the movie. I don't know, just a suggestion.... (I know why they put them there but in the absence of a cohesive plot, this was just in bad taste)
Overall, I wasted precious time watching this movie and I regret the sequence of decisions I made that led me to watch it. I think this story should have been a tv series, (a miniseries maybe,) instead of a movie but given the number of gratuitous sex scenes in it, I can see why they chose to make a movie instead.
Please go watch something else if you want to watch a good movie. If you're here for the nudity or the actors, then go ahead and watch it!
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