The Korean Film Festival has somehow prevailed on the City of Los Angeles to cover the meters near the theater so festival goers can park there all day without paying a cent. This is exciting! And here everyone thought I was going to blog about the actual festival. No. I’m blogging about the parking. I think I’ve been in LA too long… Anyway, if you’re going to the festival and you don’t feel like looking for street parking in the neighborhood north of Beverly, feel free to park at one of the meters with a red cover.
Okay. Now I’m actually going to talk about the festival. It kicked off with a panel with Roy Lee, Jonathan Kim, and Zak Kadison (if you don’t know who they are or want to know what the panel was about, go here), followed by a reception where folks could feast on egg rolls and kimbap and fruit and sundry other goodies while chatting with the panelists and Kim Tai Shik, director of the opening night film. The good thing about the reception was that it was small enough that you actually could chat with these people if you chose to.
The opening film itself, Driving With My Wife’s Lover, wasn’t exactly what I expected. I don’t know why I thought it was going to be plot-driven, but it was actually character-driven. I think Kim Tai Shik did a good job with it, but you have to be into arthouse-type movies to appreciate it. If you are, check it out.
At certain points random things happen in the film, and Kim Tai Shik said he put them in precisely because they were random. He said random things happen in life, and they can take on meaning to the people they’re happening to. So he stuck a few into his film, I guess to see if any meaning would stick. Maybe it did; he seems very open to hearing what other people see in his work instead of prescribing what you’re supposed to see.
I love Koreatown in the springtime... 