Host & Guest

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Host & Guest

Feb 07, 2017

Writer by Pierce Conran
View1919

2006｜92 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR SHIN Dong-il

CAST KIM Jae-rok, KANG Ji-hwan

RELEASE DATE November 15, 2006

CONTACT CJ Entertainment

Tel: +82 2 371 8147

Fax: +82 2 371 6340

Email: filmsales@cj.net

A student of the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), SHIN Dong-il, who recently premiered his fourth film Come, Together at the 21st Busan International Film Festival last fall, debuted 11 years ago at the same festival with the acclaimed indie feature Host & Guest.

Veteran supporting star KIM Jae-rok takes on a rare leading part as a cantankerous middle-aged film professor Ho-joon who has grown bitter over the years, following a past as a student activist and as an aspiring filmmaker who never made his debut. Now a divorced man who has lost custody of his son, he downgrades to a small bedsit and curses the world around him, occasionally finding comfort with paid companions in his bed.

One day, he accidentally locks himself in his bathroom and remains there, despondent and awaiting death, only for the most unlikely of people to come to his aid, a Jehova’s Witness. Grateful, he spends time with the pious young man, who will soon face jail time as a conscientious objector refusing to do his military service. The unlikely pair with their different ideologies slowly learn more about each other.

Just like his lead character, director SHIN also toiled for several years as an aspiring filmmaker and was involved in activism in his college days so it’s not a stretch to say that Ho-joon is at least in some ways on autobiographical character. Ho-joon fancies himself a moral man whose anger is directed at the ills of society and the complacency of its citizens, but in actuality he has lost his way and his outbursts mask his dissatisfaction with his own life.

When he meets Gye-sang, the young Jehova’s Witness, at first he sees an ideological chasm between them but eventually the odd relationship offers a calming influence on Ho-joon’s outbursts. Yet the film is not only about the middle-aged film professor, but also a young man who seeks to lead a moral life but whose naivety demonstrates he doesn’t yet have a thick enough skin to be exposed to the ills of society. As such, both characters offer a counterpoint to the other and allow them to contemplate a degree of compromise in the ways they view the world.

SHIN dots his film with several allusions to politics, referencing then US president George W. Bush, and relieves the morose ideas on show with ample wit in his screenplay, but it would be all for nought without the participation of the scabrous KIM Jae-rok and an impressive debut film role for KANG Ji-hwan.

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