Interview (Korean: 인터뷰; RR: Inteobyu) is a 2000 South Korean experimental romantic drama film directed and co-written by La Femis-graduate and academic Daniel H. Byun.[1][2] The story is about Eun-seok (Lee Jung-jae), who is pretending to make a documentary about love when he involves a young woman Young-hee (Shim Eun-ha), who works as a beauty assistant in a parlor shop, found in a tape filmed by Seok's assistant director Min-su (Kim Jung-hyun).

Interview
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Daniel H. Byun
Written by	Daniel H. Byun Jin-wan Jeong Yong-kook Kwon Hyeon-ri Oh
Produced by	Mi-yeong Lee Seung-jae Lee
Starring	Lee Jung-jae Shim Eun-ha
Cinematography	Kim Hyung-koo
Edited by	Sang-beom Kim
Music by	Ho-jun Park
Production company	Cine 2000
Distributed by	Cinema Service
Release date	April 1, 2000
Running time	107 minutes
Country	South Korea
Languages	Korean French
Budget	₩2.87 billion ($2 million)

Production began in September 1999, it was shot in 35mm film with a budgeted at $2 million, Interview was the seventh film to be made under the guidelines of Danish's avant-garde movement Dogme 95 to officially certified as a Dogme film (known as Dogme #7 - Interview), and the first Asian feature-length film (referred as "Asian Dogme") to produced under the Dogme rules known as "Vows of Chastity".[3][4]

Interview was released in April 1, 2000 on local cinemas. Simultaneously, this was Hyun's feature-length directorial debut, Debac's acting debut, and Eun-ha's last feature-length film before the latter's retirement in the same year.[5][6]

Plot

Yeong-hee tells the story of her boyfriend who went to her bag. Eun-seok, who pays attention to her Young-hee, continues to capture her on her camera. Young-hee rejects Eun-seok's request to take a picture of her hairdresser, but she allows her to accompany her to visit her boyfriend instead. However, returning from a short trip, Eun-seok runs down the Han River as if desperate for something. The film then moves to Paris one year before the interview. Eun-seok, who later became a film student, receives a request to film a rehearsal for Korean dancer's performance, and captures the passionate dance of two men and women on his camera.

Cast

• Lee Jung-jae as Eun-seok
• Shim Eun-ha as Lee Young-hee
• Cho Jae-hyun as Byung-kwon
• Kim Jung-hyun as Min-soo
• Stéphane Debac as Jerome
• Charlotte Becquin

Kwon Min-joong, Yang Eun-yong, Chu Sang-mi, and Kim Yoon-ah as themselves

Production

Lee Jung-jae (pictured in 2021) was the first actor to cast in the film began in September 1999.

Shooting on his feature film debut began in September 1999 and takes him to France, where Byun studied and graduated at French's film school La Femis two years ago (and later he shot in the graveyard scene at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, where it found a gravestone reference to Lars von Trier's favorite filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky), for getting some lensing this month as well as following the Dogme guidelines. According to Christopher Alford of Variety, the film was budgeted at $2 million, utilizing digital video and 35mm film for the story within a story of a director interviewing people about the intimate details of their lives.[7]

Emmy-winning veteran actor Lee Jung-jae was cast in the film alongside with actress Shim Eun-ha.[8]

Style

Dogme 95

As of 2005, ousted of the thirty-four films were produced only in the USA and European countries using the Dogme 95 movement before the dissolution in 2005; Interview was released in April 1, 2000 on South Korea, being the first and to date only Asian as well as the first South Korean film ever using the movement, also being the seventh Dogme film, who were complimented by Dogme's founding brothers Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier, although it was severely criticized and failed to gain popularity by local audiences due of its cryptic development of the story.[9][10]

Although Interview does not explicitly mention that it is registered as Dogma #7, it refers to a scheduled German film titled Broken Cookies, directed by von Trier's frequent collaborator Udo Kier, for attempt to submitting into the manifesto as the seventh Dogme, but the film was never realized before ended up submitted by Byun's film.[11]

Although as per Dogme rules were passed, according to Richard Kelly of The Independent, he found that the film was violated four out of ten Dogme rules, which was laid out by the manifesto within its first five minutes; cramming in dolly shots and hidden cameras, uses of moody lighting, a director's credit, and non-diegetic background music (only one music, used for the dance scene, was composed by Ho-jun Park) as if purposefully endeavoring to fail the audition.[12]

Reception

Critical response

David Desser of SUNYP, gave a mixed review of this film's plot and narrative, saying: More daringly, Interview leaps between registers of past, present, and conditional, where some narrative may be fantasy or otherwise difficult to place within a coherent story outline.[13]

Derek Elley of Variety, who also gave a mixed review of this film, saying: "A decent movie lies at the heart of the romantic drama Interview, an over-long feature debut by Daniel H. Byun that suffers from a bad case of first-film-itis. Attempting to cram in everything except The Meaning of Life, Byun alienates the viewer from pic's undoubted strengths and emphasizes its pretentious weaknesses. Unfortunately, the film is being marketed internationally in a discursive two-hour-plus version, which is a serious mistake".[4]

Again at Kelly of The Independent, the film gave a mixed-to-negative review, saying: "Worse, the plot is a lot of self-conscious maundering about a film student's romantic obsessions. For this viewer, Dogme films should be as uncouth as possible, as in parts of Festen and all of The Idiots."[12]

Recognition

Eun-ha, who portrayed a young woman Young-hee, was nominated for Best Actress category in Blue Dragon Film Awards. It was nominated four technical categories, won the Best Production category at 38th Grand Bell Awards.[14]

Despite its mixed response, Interview was one of the nine films appeared from the Museum of Arts and Design, who celebrated the movement with the retrospective The Director Must Not Be Credited: 20 Years of Dogme 95.[15]

See also

• Dogme 95
• Korean Wave
• This Charming Girl (2004) by Lee Yoon-Ki
• Secret Sunshine (2007) by Lee Chang-dong
• The Housemaid (2010) by Im Sang-soo

References