“Killing Romance” director Lee Won-Suk on his logic-defying cult comedy: “Don’t ask why, just go with it!” – London East Asia Film Festival

“Incredibly weird – but lovely” was one viewer’s indelible comment after the UK premiere of Lee Won-suk’s demented comedy Kill romance on Friday. Starring Lee Hanee, a former Miss Universe who recently appeared in the sci-fi series alientells the story of Hwa Yeo-rae, a viral internet star trapped in a controlling marriage with the evil Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-kyun, who heads up). parasites wealthy Park family). To escape Na, Yeo-rae teams up with her new neighbor Beom-woo (Gong Myung), a young superfan who plans a series of increasingly bizarre assassination attempts.

On paper it sounds like a traditional neo-noir, but in director Lee’s hands it becomes a furious, twisted live-action Disney cartoon, complete with song-and-dance numbers and a telepathic ostrich out for spaghetti- revenge is over. Western style. The fact that the film was shot during the Corona crisis did not help: the production left the studio in Seoul and became a “traveling circus”, moving from place to place and filming at the moment. “Sometimes we got really lucky,” Lee admitted, “and sometimes we didn’t; To be honest, there were some scenes that we couldn’t use because they were so poorly shot. As a result, the film has a dreamlike flow that hardly needs to be questioned. “Don’t ask why, just go with it,” Lee laughed.

But strangely enough, the film was allegedly be a traditional film. “Originally the script was one [straight] Drama,” Lee said. “It was written by Park Jeong-ye, the famous Korean writer, and when I got the script, I was really interested. It was a very good script, but I was working on something else. Then the project fell through and the production company came back with the script. They didn’t change anything, but they told me I could do whatever I wanted. So I decided to make it a fairy tale. I do a lot of strange things in Korea and when I send my scripts, it is very difficult to convince investors. That’s why I always say: “What if…?” Those are the magic words. From this moment on, anything is possible.”

It goes without saying that, even though it has now received high praise at special film festivals in the West, Kill romance was controversial when it appeared at home in April. “The public in Korea either hates it or loves it,” Lee said. “There’s something out there called the Golden Egg.” [an aggregate review site like Rotten Tomatoes]and we set a record. After the film was released, the Golden Egg was cracked within two hours. It was the fastest film to crack the egg.” He laughs. “And this is not good — The egg must remain intact! Usually it stays intact for three or four days, but indoors two Watch When our film came out, it had cracks. But then these fanatical fans rebel and thanks to them the broken egg becomes the golden egg again. This has never happened in Korean history.”

Lee attributed this reversal of fortune to social media. “I used to think that tweeters were bad,” he said, “but people on Twitter are starting to like this movie. Every time they see it they discover new symbolism, new things, and every time we have a screening, they come and ask me questions like, “Oh, did you do that scene on purpose?” And I say, “No.” [Laughs] A lot of things in the film are things that I honestly didn’t plan, but people think we planned it and we’re trying to say something, but a lot of things are easy happened. But some people realize this and still fall in love with the film and watch it again and again. I get about 80 to 100 DMs every day, but I answer everything. I am so grateful to them.”