Big Round of Applause
Particularly for Moon So-ri, that must have been quite a difficult performance for her.
I agree. This is one of the greatest performances I have seen.
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MovieChat Forums > Oasiseu (2004) Discussion > Big Round of Applause
I will first, second and third that. Fantastic performance. To see her transition so easily in and out of character was just jaw dropping. Looking forward to seeing other films she is in if I can find them.
Korean films are rapidly becoming my favorite foreign films.
IMO, the best performance of at least the past five years, male or female. I was blown away by this film when I saw it, and Moon was one of the chief reasons why.
I saw the film at the 2003 Seattle Film Festival. Moon herself was actually seated about two seats away from me, and got up to introduce the film beforehand. She is quite a petite woman, probably no more than 5'4". At the time, I had no idea who she was, and knew very little about the film. She returned to her seat, then left maybe twenty minutes after the movie had started.
As I say, I totally loved the film. If only she'd stuck around, I would have definitely shaken her hand! Brilliant! (And the rest of the crowd loved her, too, as she won the audience selected Best Actress award that year).
Later, I watched the Korean DVD of Oasis. On it is a feature (in Korean) showing her working process. Between scenes you can see her break down and cry; apparently the act of putting her body into those contortions was physically painful to her.
By the way, if you liked her in this, I highly recommend you see 'A Good Lawyer's Wife', the movie she made after Oasis. She's very nearly as good there as here. In fact, on the basis of these two films, you could make a case for her being one of the best actresses working today anywhere in the world. She plays a jaded wife whose hubby is having an affair, and she gets tempted to do the same with a neighborhood teenage boy. She absolutely bares her soul (and her body) in a performance so raw that I cannot imagine any American actress of similar stature risking it (she is quite popular in Korea). She won the Korean Best Actress award for both performances.
'The President's Barber', her latest film, is pretty slight. Her role is small and not particularly challenging. Maybe she needed a break! (I liked the film, though). But her next film is coming out in May, 2005, and hopefully it will be another barnburner! It's called 'Sagwa', which can be translated as either Apology or Apple (the website is called www.sorryapple.com, so even they don't seem to know!). Here is a Korean language site that shows the poster:
http://www.movieok.co.kr/movie/movieinfo_character.asp?kind=open&m_id=M000009066
Not sure why IMDB doesn't have this listed yet, but it should soon!
Eric, thanks so much for the info. Too bad you didn't get to talk with her at the Oasis showing -- that would have been one of those before they were famous moments!
Yes, I have seen her in "The Good Lawyers Wife" too. I didn't like it as much as "Oasis" but still she was very good in it. I wish I could find "Peppermint Candy". Look forward both to "The Presidents Barber" and "Sagwa" if/when my local video store gets them on DVD. They have a pretty good Korean film section but I am rapidly running through it.
Anybody know how good of collection of Asian films Netflix or Blockbuster has? Or if there is an Asian Netflix?
Did you try greencine?
they do circulate stuff that is not in distribution here.
-mouldyboats
lol I think the people called it sorryapple on purpose. I don't know anything about the film, but that's one thing that can be done with the Korean language all the time. There are so many words that sound and look the same but mean different things.(I know there's a word for that_-_;;can't remember)
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Yes, she was amazing.
shareyeah her performance was totally amazing.. also the easiness with which she turn into a normal person again (in her dreams sequences) ..though the most powerfully performance lies in the way she handles her character .. the relatioonship between her and the guy was also very powerfully, yet very demanding./.
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So-ri Moon and Kyung-gu Sol delivers great performances because they don't overact, their acting is subtle enough to gives us a solid and credible performance.
So-ri Moon obviously calls more our attention since she plays the role of a girl with cerebral palsy, something that for sure demanded her a lot of physical and mental effort.
But we should also notice how good was Kyung-gu Sol, who plays a "slow" and socially dysfunctional dude. His acting is so good that we wonder if the director casted a true "retarded" person to play the role. Of course that wasn't the case, It's just a great actor doing his job.
The plot it's quite simple and at the same time quite complex, It's both disturbing and endearing, cruel and sweet.
Great acting, great movie.
9/10
In the extra features on the korean release it says the Moon So-ri had to go the hospital a couple of times during filming because the physical contortions were so painful.
I've seen Sol Kyung-gu in a few other movies and he is definitely not a one-trick pony like Cruise and Ford. His characters in Public Enemy and Jail Breakers are so completely different that I didn't even recognize him until I read the credits.
Although I usually love Ebert, his Oasis review disappointed me for several reasons. One was that he failed to mention what a wonderful job the actress did with this role. Instead he cites another movie, that is played by a woman who really did have cerebral palsy. It looked like a difficult performance, just watching her was painful. But she did an incredible job, and it is one of the best performances.
Within you I lose myself, without you I find myself, wanting to be lost again.
I was disappointed by Ebert's review as well. He seemed to get a few facts about the plot in error as well. It made me wonder if perhaps he was distracted or otherwise not paying full attention to the movie.
sharewell, i didn't really appreciate how he implied that the conflict at the end at the police station felt stilted (or something to that effect). at no point did i feel that it was a conflict for the sake of conflict. anyway, moon so-ri is also in family ties which i saw at the nykff this year, and although all the performances were great, she really stood out and has mannerisms and nuances that are very interesting to watch.
shareFantastic performance, remaniscent of Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot", also a brilliant early-career role.
I also thought Kyung-gu Sol was great. I don't know how he's acted in other films, but unless this was the same charecter he always plays (ala Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, et al), he was also playing it to the hilt. So believeable. Such little nuances that brought him to life. I think his charecterization had to be as great as hers to make the film so all-around wonderful. In fact, everyone was flawless.
Phenomenal Performance. She did better that Daniel Day Lewis in "My Left Foot. Some of the best acting ive seen in cinematic history.
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