Review: 4th Place, Korean Film Festival In Australia (KOFFIA)

Thursday, 1st September marked the seventh year for the Korean Film Festival In Australian (KOFFIA). ACMI hosted Melbourne’s festival and invited guests to share canapés of kimchi, cocktails and listen to traditional music on the Gayageum. This festival boasts twenty newly released and critically acclaimed Korean films, however it was the film titled 4th Place, written and directed by Jung Ji-woo, which opened the festival.

Commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, 4th Place delves into the brutal world of competitive sports and questions whether, in the pursuit of success, does the end ever justify the means.

Opening with a black-and-white prologue, we are introduced to fresh-faced competitive swimmer, Kim Gwang-su (Jung Ga-ram), who has been tipped as Korea’s future for Olympic success. After returning from practise and looking for dinner, he meets one of the swimming reporters Young-hoon (Choi Moo-sung) and they both partake in a night of heavy drinking. Despite this, Gwang-su swims exceptionally well the following morning and is on track to break records at the International Competitions in the next few weeks. Confident with his progress and times, Gwang-su cuts practise to gamble and drink, missing vital training sessions. His coaches eventually find and punish him for his recklessness, through the method of caning him with wooden pool brooms. After coping several lashes, he storms out of the complex and alerts Young-hoon to write a report about these acts of violence.

The storyline skips sixteen years on, now in colour, and focuses on eleven-year-old swimmer Joon-ho (Yoo Jae-sang). Despite high expectations placed on him by his mother, Jeong-ae (Lee Hang-na), he only seems to place fourth at junior competitions. Through the power of prayer and persuasive donations she tracks down a competent coach with unorthodox training methods. Enter Gwang-su (Park Hae-joon); a husk of the once professional swimmer, and now a worker at the local aquatic centre. It starts out with the common sports narrative; an apathetic coach, whose glory was snatched away prematurely during his youth, meets a competent underdog who has a chance at the success he missed out on. Gwang-su commits himself to the project and, as he becomes more desperate to win, his relationship with Joon-ho gradually becomes violent. He begins beating the boy in the same fashion that his coach did to him when he was a young swimmer. Gwang-su plays both the aggressor and consoler; comforting Joon-ho that it was for his own good and that he’s inspiring ambition.

The relentless pressures to succeed bleed into Joon-ho’s dreams, and it becomes more apparent he only wants to win for the sake of others. His own drawing of a gold medal hanging on the wall above his bed is enough for him, but it cannot satisfy his mother or Gwang-su. Even after his mother discovers the bruises on his back, Joon-ho is pushed to continue training, in light of his recent second-place win. No one steps in until Joon-ho’s father accidentally learns about the coach’s brutality, and even then he only bribes the coach with money to stop caning their son.

Jung’s artfully constructed film points to our performance-driven culture, unhappy with anything less than first place. Lee’s performance as Joon-ho’s mother perfectly embodies the overbearing and paradoxical weight of society’s expectations for each child to be a winner. Park Hae-joon, playing the older version of Gwang-su, is riveting to watch; he has the ability to both terrify and charm, a technique that works on Joon-ho and the audience.

A noteworthy scene from the film is where the mother is walking back from the church with her youngest son, Ki-ho (Suh Hwan-hee), and he asks what she prayed for for each family member. She prayed for Joon-ho to come first, and for Ki-ho to attend college when he’s older. When he asks about her own prayers she states she prayed for “nothing” for herself. Her children appear to be her biggest achievement and treats their achievements as her own.

Jung navigates the heavy topic of child abuse with sensitivity and grace. It is littered with light-hearted exchanges between all characters and captures the complexity of human nature. It is also beautifully shot, especially the underwater dreamscape scene where Joon-ho tumbles around the shimmering lights refracting underneath the surface of the water. My only criticism is that the relationship between Joon-ho’s father and coach was not fully explored, and as a result Gwang-su’s admission at the end of the film was a little underwhelming.

4th Place will screen in Adelaide’s Palace Nova Cinema on Thursday, 15th September and in Perth’s Event Cinema on Thursday 22nd of September.

Written by Erin Connellan

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