2000|
106 MIN |
Drama, ComedyDIRECTOR BONG Joon-ho
CAST BAE Doo-na, LEE Sung-jae, KIM Ho-jong, BYUN Hee-bong
RELEASE DATE February 19, 2000
CONTACT CJ Entertainment
Tel +82-2-371-8147
Fax +82-2-371-6340
E-mail filmsales@cj.net
Though he would not achieve wide commercial and critical success until
Memories Of Murder (2003), director
BONG Joon-ho was no slouch in his debut, immediately demonstrating his unique talents with
Barking Dogs Never Bite in 2000. Mixing his penchant for dark humor and social satire, his film ran a gamut of genres yet never lost sight of its unique lead characters, played by
LEE Sung-jae and
BAE Doo-na.
Following the successes of
Art Museum By The Zoo (1998) and
Attack The Gas Station! (1999), LEE appears as Yoon-ju, a young academic living in an apartment complex with a pregnant wife (
KIM Ho-jung). Unable to come up with the customary USD 10,000 bribe to secure his first position as a professor, the nerve-wracked Yoon-ju takes poorly to the yelping of a dog in the building and decides, on a whim, to dispose of the problem. The only obstacle in his way is young office worker and neighbor Hyun-nam (BAE Doo-na), who has been receiving notices about missing pets from dwellers in the building and one day sees Yoon-ju toss a canine from the complex roof. After witnessing the shocking act and failing to chase him down, she makes it her mission to find out who he is.
Propelled by a jazzy score and a standout turn from a 19-year-old BAE Doo-na, Barking Dogs Never Bite took its cue from BONG’s own life. As a young, newly married man himself, BONG peppered the narrative with elements that were familiar to many adults in Korea, particularly the young couples kicking off their lives on the property ladder, many of them in the same uniform apartment blocks that provide the location of the film. In fact, the residential complex used in the film was none other than the one where BONG himself lived.
Taking its Korean title from the 19th century English story A Dog of Flanders, BONG’s film offers a dark view of the standard life path that so many Koreans are expected to follow. Encroached by the suffocating demands of hierarchy and his new family, the emasculated Yoon-ju, who inspires both sympathy and shock at different points in the story, takes back a small amount of power in the only way he can think of.
Meanwhile, the quirky, spunky Hyun-nam is dutifully toiling away at a desk job yet desires to break free and pursue her own path. This is manifested in the film by various scenes where she is chasing someone or being chased - focused and in control as she pursues Yoon-ju and then later doubling back, as she tries to escape a mysterious homeless man.