3-Iron - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'3-Iron': Words aren't necessary in mysterious love story

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If the TV show "Trading Spaces" were done as a romantic yet inscrutable ghost story, it might look something like "3-Iron," a delicately mysterious and quite lovely movie from Korean master Kim Ki-Duk, who recently gave us "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring."

Sony Pictures Classics

'3-Iron'

The verdict: An elegant ghost story wrapped around an intriguing love story. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Director: Ki-duk Kim
Starring: Seung-yeon Lee, Hee Jae, Hyuk-ho Kwon, Jin-mo Ju, Jeong-ho Choi
Run time: 95 minutes
Release date: April 29, 2005
Rating: R for some sexual content.
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Tae-suk (Jae Hee) is a gentle young drifter in Seoul who places takeout menus on doorknobs, then drops back by a few days later to see if they're still there. If so, he breaks into the vacant house or apartment and temporarily makes himself at home. More phantom than thief, he never steals or damages anything. Rather, like a house elf who's ambled over from Harry Potter, he does laundry, scrubs floors, waters plants, and generally indulges in a little home improvement.

Then one day he slips into a pricey place where, unbeknownst to him, an abused young wife named Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon) is hiding in a dark corner, watching him clean up. He in turn watches as she's threatened by her nasty husband, then whisks her away with him. The two become accomplices in secret housesitting and, without ever speaking a word, fall in love.

Later in the movie, there's tragedy, followed by an inexplicable and quite moving transcendence.

Is Tae-suk a shadow summoned into substance by his love for Sun-hwa? Or is he a would-be shadow who finds he can disappear into her? The connection is the point — a connection that goes beyond mere mortality.

With their slender, childlike bodies and huge-eyed beauty, the two stars could be figures out of an anime adventure. Yet there's a sweetness, too, that suggests the ethereal sentimentality of a Charlie Chaplin picture. And tucked into the side of the frame, a touch of Johnny Depp's deadpan mystery in 1993's "Benny & Joon."

Combining the wordless romance of a silent film and the whispery strangeness of something by either of the Davids (Lynch or Cronenberg), "3-Iron" is a movie meant to be taken on faith more than anything else. The more you can grant it, the greater the reward.