Screen capture from Samaritan Girl by Ki-duk Kim I just finished watching Samaritan Girl, the latest offering from my local video store by director/writer Ki-duk Kim, who was made known to me last year by Spring, Summer, Fall Winter … and Spring. Watching this film actually ended up giving me a depth of appreciation for SSFWS that was unexpected. I had enjoyed SSFWS when I first saw it, but as I was able to experience a second film in this body of work, I really began to feel like Ki-duk Kim is probably a voice to be reckoned with. [Upon further inspection, this seems true: the so-called “validity” of his work is apparently hotly debated, and Samaritan Girl itself is referred to by at least one professional film critic as “sexual terrorism.” For the record, I think that the same critic’s assessment that anyone who enjoys Kim’s films is caught in “the blind spot that some Westerners have for East Asian films,” or, in an even more atrocious condesention that their (our) “bullshit detectors stop working,” is plainly ridiculous. Eh, caveat lector.] Specific content details aside, I personally found the diversity of the shooting and editing styles of the two films is not only highly appropriate and sensitive to their diverse subjects, but also to accentuate the profound cohesion Kim brings forth to the wildly different worlds simultaneously occupying his seemingly timeless (yet obviously contemporary) Korea. [Re: this cohesion, cf. Deleuze & Guattari’s desiring-machines.] I’ll spare you the exegesis, mostly because I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I would recommend both films highly. Particularly, I feel like a very satisfying experience might come of watching for comparison and contrast in each’s style of direction: hand-cam versus tracking shots, symmetry in frame composition, the way close-ups are handled, the way the landscape is represented, speed of cuts, etc. and the way each of these is clearly thought out in advance with regards their respective subject matter. I personally had to take pause in attempting to understand these two films as a unified (formal?) vision of the world. Even if nothing else, the staging of the films more than pays back the price of admission.