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Recently, there has been an increasing number of much-anticipated filmmakers making their comeback, and LEE Soo-yeon is one of them. After attracting attention with her shorts, such as Ra (1998) and The Goggles (2000), she made her feature debut in 2003 with the horror thriller The Uninvited starring the most hottest stars of the time, PARK Shin-yang and Gianna JUN. After that, it has taken her 13 years to make her second feature, Bluebeard. As LEE Soo-yeon is finally breaking her silence and meeting the audience, we had the occasion to have an interview with her.

There were several reasons, but it’s mainly because after The Uninvited I worked for a long time on a project. It would have been a bloody tale of a mermaid, and it took me 7 years. But realistically speaking, I think this project was too difficult to carry out. (laughs)

Come to think of it, there are similarities. I guess it’s because they both share identical themes. Both films deal with stories about covered-up and disregarded truths that at one point slip through the cracks and take their toll. It’s like a backlash from the subconscious. 

Yes. The Uninvited shows that aspect of the human nature that makes humans believe only what they can bear. And the protagonist in Bluebeard covers up his errors in a similar manner. Seung-hoon (CHO Jin-woong) in Bluebeard is unable to look in the mirror. Such action prevents one’s mental development. The Uninvited deals with a person’s trauma regarding a sin that was not committed by him, while Bluebeard deals with one that was committed. 

To a certain extent, the audience gets to watch the film as if they were wearing some special glasses equipped with a ‘defense mechanism’. It’s like watching it in a third-person’s point-of-view, and then when the seal is broken you shift to a first-person’s point-of-view. 

Seung-hoon places all the blame for his filthy side on others, and because of this, such ambiguous elements emerge. However, the most undeniable fact is that Seung-hoon may have abandoned his wife’s corpse, but he did not kill her. And the external circumstances surrounding this key fact are such that it leaves enough room for misunderstanding. Because of that, the truth induces a turnaround when it is finally revealed, which also generates a sense of empathy with the protagonist. But that wasn’t intentional, I just went with the flow to tell the story I was going for, and it wasn’t until later that I realized I made the film look like a puzzle. 

It’s true. I’ve deeply meditated on these ‘new towns’. I believe these spaces represent the weirdest and most hideous aspects of Korean society. You can see there all the embarrassing desires of Korea as a nation. Such wishes are portrayed through the contrast between the native residents and the rampant constructions of the new town in Bluebeard. I believe this sums up everything about Korean society. 

Bluebeard wasn’t conceived as a thriller as I was convinced this film shouldn’t be perceived by the audience as one in which a cop is pursuing a criminal. The serial murders are way to incite fear, not the goal of the film. Ultimately it is a tale following the psychology of a man, Seung-hoon. It’s a story about the birth of a new type of middle-class crimes as a very normal person commits murder during a class shift. It tells the tale of a personal evil as one is slowly destroyed, and to a larger extent the problems of a system encouraged by economic failure.

He stands on the opposite side of Seung-hoon, and is a natural psychopathic killer just like all those that have existed since the beginning of mankind. He may have meticulously planned his murders during his younger years, but now his Alzheimer’s condition lets his animal instinct come out from time to time. 

There are two projects I have in mind. One’s a spy film and the other… it will depend on the success of this film in theaters. I may end up making a film totally different from what I have prepared so far. (laughs)