The Ugly is Quite Beautiful @TIFF 50

If FERNTV listened to every review on the net, then there would have been a lot of films missed. There was not much said about The Ugly which made its premiere at TIFF 50. The film flew under the radar with many Korean let alone Asian films making its premiere at this festival. From Park Chan-Wook‘s No Other Choice to Toronto’s own 100 Sunset directed by Kunsang Kyirong, The Ugly had to live more to its name to make an impact on a TIFF audience. And so it did as the film directed by Train to Busan’s Yeon Sang-ho is not your ordinary Korean film but follows the traditional template of having you hooked until the last minute.

The Ugly grabs you from the very beginning as your introduced to a family headed by a blind father named Im Yeong-gyu, played by Kwon Have-hyo, who has cut a quite an interesting life for himself. He is an artisan who knows how to make beautiful stamps which is made pure from the heart and intuition.

Im is followed by a journalist Su Jin, played by Han Ji-hyeon, who wants to do a documentary piece on the his work and life journey. She stumbles upon something bigger when Im’s son Dong-hwan, played by Park Jeong-min, receives an important phone call. Someone has found his mother, Young-hee’s remains and he must go to verify if it’s her because she disappeared four decades ago. Su Jin follows Dong-hwan around as they both piece this puzzle together to find out the truth as to what happened to his mother.

Director Yeon Sang-ho cuts this film by interviews instead of chapters as the audience starts to learn the truth about Im’s mother through a journey of people whom she used to work with or be friends with. We find out that she worked at a garment factory and was called “Dung Orge” amongst her peers. She was so ugly that her face was not even shown in the film causing the audience to be curious about this mysterious mother.

We then are delighted to past sequences of Dong-hwans parents and how they eventually met and got married. But when the honeymoon was over, things start to go south for both of them as they became the laughing stock of the community. Especially to her boss, played Im Sung-jae who downright abused her. He becomes a vital piece to the truth seeking Dong-hwan and Su Jin’s journey.

What FERNTV loves about Korean cinema is that these films hook you until the last second. The Ugly follows this format as you start to realize that “it is not over until it is over”. This is what makes director Yeon Sang-ho’s film so exciting is that it does not waste any time and there is no excitement for it to be a slow burner. Rather The Ugly gets right to the point and the audience is immersed into the truth just as Dong-hwan and Su-Jin are.

Despite the film having a dark subject and far fetched storyline, The Ugly is entertaining and will have you hooked. Especially the performance from Kwon Have-hyo who is blind but not blind to the truth. The Ugly is quite different from Yeon’s previous films but will still have you wondering what is going to happen next.