Rainbow Trout

From November 22nd through December 4th, Film at Lincoln Center, in collaboration with Subway Cinema, will be sponsoring a timely retrospective called “Relentless Invention: New Korean Cinema, 1996–2003,” featuring many significant films, some presented in 35mm prints, including works by such important directors as Bong Joon Ho, Kim Jee-woon, Hong Sang-soo and Park Chan-wook, alongside many lesser-known titles.

 

One of these latter, Park Jong-won’s Rainbow Trout from 1999, is one of the major discoveries of the series, presented here in a terrific 35mm print. A story about a progressively harrowing weekend in the country spent by a group of urban visitors, the film displays a masterful command of mise-en-scène, with the director employing composition and editing with impressive psychological acuity, assisted by an extraordinary cast. The intensity of the film’s anatomizing of class dynamics and of the cynicism of petit-bourgeois morality suggests a disquieting pessimism worthy of Michael Haneke or Alfred Hitchcock (although lacking the latter’s affirmative, therapeutic theme, brilliantly explored by the critic Robin Wood). In light of this remarkable achievement, one hopes for an opportunity to see other works by this evidently under-appreciated filmmaker.

 

Rainbow Trout screens at the Walter Reade Theater on Wednesday, November 27th at 6:30pm and Friday, November 29th at 2:30pm.