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Thirst

THIRST (Park Chan-wook). 133 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (August 7). For venues, times and trailers, see Movies. Rating: NN


Park Chan-wook’s Thirst shared the Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year. They gave the same prize to Il Divo last year, so I guess it’s traditional to bestow the award on the festival’s biggest mess.[rssbreak]

An incoherent mix of horror, film noir and Emile Zola (seriously), Thirst revolves around a noble Catholic priest (The Host’s Song Kang-ho), who finds himself turned into a lustful vampire after a failed African drug trial. Returning home to Korea, he falls in with the family of a childhood friend and finds himself uncontrollably drawn to the friend’s wife (Kim Ok-vin). Things do not go well.

Master stylist Park’s feel for baroque set pieces is as strong as it was in Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. The opening and closing sequences are spectacular, and a key sex scene in the middle is almost distressingly powerful.

But he’s unable to navigate the tonal shifts necessary to get to those moments. One transition is so jarring that I was sure the projectionist had mixed up the film’s reels.

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