Stateless Things
Directed by Kim Kyung Mook
Starring Lee Paul, Yeom Hyun Joon, Kim Sae Byuk
2012
The bleak lives of the stateless ones. ★★★
Relatively Spoiler-Free.
Stateless Things is one of those once-in-a-blue-moon queer movies to come out of South Korea with an actually queer director. Released in 2012, it was the third full-length film in the young director Kim Kyung Mook's already heavy filmography.
Stateless Things is a very bleak film. The three main characters are at the bottom of the Korean societal hierarchy: Joon (Lee Paul) is a young North Korean defector, Soon Hee (Kim Sae Byuk) is a Korean-Chinese illigal immigrant, and Hyun (Yeom Hyun Joon) is a gay male prostitute. This tragic trio are, if not underage, of barely adult status.
Stateless Things follows its main characters silently as they go on with their sad, sad lives in the cruel urbanscapes of Seoul. Befitting its independent cinema status, this movie is abundant with dialogue-less long takes and hand-held cameras.
There isn't much to the plot. For the majority of the film, the characters unite and part without much happening. Sometimes it's frustrating how unexplained everything feels. I was especially disappointed with the film's handling of Soon Hee, a headstrong Korean-Chinese worker, portrayed by the wonderful newcomer Kim Sae Byuk. The director discards her halfway through the movie without much explanation, and she disappears completely as the story focuses on the two boys who are clearly the director's main concern.
The film could definitely do without the long takes that are so long and uneventful that they take away from the movie. You feel his despair as Joon walks through the streets of Jongno in one take, but after five minutes of watching him walk, and walk, and walk some more, it can get tiring.
Some of these long takes are quite beautiful in other instances. One particular scene, the sex scene between Hyun and his older lover, is probably the best gay sex scene I've seen in a Korean movie. You can feel the timid desire between the two characters, and that brief moment of happiness which hurts a lot because you know it's not going to last. It's exceptionally shot.
The main two actors are wonderful as they are very organic in their roles. They really own their characters. There's no overacting in this movie, as everything feels really natural. Hyun is a beautiful, naive boy,searching for attention in seemingly all the wrong places. Yeom Hyun Joon is perfect in his portrayal. Lee Paul is downright tragic as Joon, forced to resort to drastic means to survive. There is a particular scene involving Joon that is shocking, unbelievably sad, and extremely hard to watch.
But most of the movie suffers from its length and languid pace. Like I've said, it could definitely do without some of the longer scenes that didn't add much to the film. These aimless scenes could have been fine if the rest of the film was better explained, but as the film trudges on wordlessly, they only provide sources of boredom. Leading up to the meetup of Joon and Hyun's lives is painfully slow, and when their stories do come together and proceed to the finale, there's only confusion at when, and how, because of the unexplained nature of the movie.
Then there's the juxtaposition of a North Korean defector's life with that of a gay youth's. It's a questionable comparison, but the movie manages to dodge being too problematic as it safely brings the two miseries together, revealing that it's not a competition of "look who's more oppressed!". Despite their backgrounds and characteristics, these two boys are similarly lost with a bleak future, and the movie asks the audience to only focus on their present statelessness.
The usage of space in the film is also interesting and well thought-out, as the characters are often imprisoned in spaces, both suffocatingly small and sadly vast. They are stateless but they cannot be free from the state on which they wander aimlessly. You feel for their lost souls, and as you look at them stumble into the uninviting city on screen, you pray that they will soon find a place where they can be finally at peace.
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