Reviews

DNG is the weirdest movie you will ever see!

The story starts off as just another teen comedy but turns into something just completely insane towards the end. I seriously felt like I was on drugs watching this (You'll see what I mean). This movie has teen troubles, a transvestite business Unnie, a Cyclops student, transgendered student, a prostitute student turned dancing video sensation, a man principle turned lady dragon, and plenty of laughs. You will be saying WTF am I watching throughout the entire movie but that's what makes this movie fun to watch.

The cast is mostly unknowns but they managed to make thier roles believable.

Really loved the use of color.

I'd recommend this movie because its funny and out of the ordinary.

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Oh Ji-ho & "La Belle"

By Fung Lan Yong (2011)



La Belle (starring Oh Ji-ho) contains captivating expressions that reflect Roland Barthes' concept of neutrality, something that is open and noncommittal. It exposes the audience to the passionate experiences of two star-crossed characters so much that they become lost within the scenes. Such loss of self or immersion allows the audience to experience a string of emotions outside the social realm, free from cultural constraints.

La Belle is a novelistic form of rhetoric that challenges the audience's views of the social constructs of love without asserting any definitive meaning. It presents the fictionalized reflections of a young melancholic writer seeking to identify, and be identified by, a lovely model whose personal life he knows little about, and who does not love him at all. While his obsession is open to criticism, his unrequited love evokes empathy.

His desperate search for signs by which to express, and receive, love is mainly evident through illusions. By affirming himself into a false ideal reality, the gorgeous introverted writer spends his days waiting in a delusion, demonstrating the contradictory logic inherent in his search for love.



La Belle is a story about two complex personalities, a dashing writer and a captivating model, whose intriguing lives revolve around a passionately surreal relationship. Though blessed with many ecstatic moments, the relationship is a heart-wrenching experience characterized by waiting, abuse, unrequited love, and fatal emotions.



The writer

The writer (Oh Ji-ho) is an introspective and reclusive individual who strives to derive reality from fantasy. Possessing neither courage nor inner strength to voice his feelings, he persuades himself to use his youthful body to speak the language whenever he fails to express his thoughts and emotions with words.





He patiently waits for la belle to return with empty longing eyes. He silently follows her every abrupt departure with a long painful gaze. He tenderly uses his warm body as a safe haven that offers her security and comfort. As she weeps in his sturdy arms over another man, all he is able to do is to shout a silent scream that cries out for unrequited love, far beyond her unreachable space.





He ruefully stares at the elaborate body art on her back, stressing that he does not want others to paint on her. He gently carries her from the wet bathroom floor with loving arms that lay her on his spotlessly white bed. Under the wet dress, he gingerly wipes her lifeless body with a soft white towel so that she can recuperate from the physical and emotional wounds inflicted by another man, a man whom she recklessly clings to.





He tries in vain to make her stay by embracing her with tightening arms, begging her not to return to the abusive boyfriend. Determined to win her love by erasing her forbidden past, he impulsively kills the abusive rival by calmly slashing his stomach with a gleaming razor blade at a crowded junction.















La belle

La belle is the capricious model who pays the writer an unexpected visit on a gloomy night, dripping cold and homeless. Shunned by an abusive man, she wants the writer to mend her broken heart and calm her shattered mind. Since then, she becomes not only an indispensable part of his life, but his very existence as well.





She continues to devote her affection to a brutal man, as the writer sinks deeper and deeper in love with her. She disappears from his life the minute the cellular phone rings, without a moment's notice or a farewell kiss. Having utterly no knowledge of her undertakings outside, he can only despondently wait for her return, penning his lovelorn feelings in a black-cover diary, with black ink constantly flowing from a black fountain pen.





She returns to the writer each time she is badly injured, depressed, or intoxicated, yet she offers him neither attention nor gratitude. Seeking solitude from cold rejection, she finds solace in the writer's harmoniously sparse apartment that rises far above the hustle and bustle of her own shattered world. Shackled by a sadomasochistic relationship, all she wants from the writer is temporary physical and emotional relief, not a committed relationship with love as the foundation.





She coldheartedly uses the writer as a substitute for unrequited love and as a provider of food and shelter, never once cherishing him as the object of her love. She unrepentantly manipulates his caring and sensitive nature to satisfy her sordid desire to be with the other man. In the writer's nurturing embrace, she pretends that she is loved by the sadistic man whom she truly adores, one who reciprocates her adulation by trampling on her soul with cruel contempt.





The lover of her choice is an aloof and violent man who exploits her movements like a perfunctory marionette. While she is with the writer, she has one ear tuned to her phone all the time. Whenever the lover calls, she leaps right out of the writer's view, dresses up, and races off without uttering a single word. Her heartstring is synonymous with the phone line securely wrapped around the other man's fingers; whenever he tugs, she helplessly responds without the slightest hesitation, like a selfless moth fatally drawn to an insidious candle flame.





She treats everything casually; she casually enters the writer's life and then casually abandons him. She says that destiny is casual and that it is also casual when things become reality. When she feels dejected, she casually finds the writer to give her accommodation and sustenance. While faithfully waiting for the other man to call, she casually uses the writer as a soporific to soothe her pain. She casually weaves a gripping spell from which the writer tries to struggle free, but to no avail.





She is unable to wrench herself free from a self-destructive past, too engulfed to wake up from a nightmare to start a loving relationship with the writer. Her boyfriend treads on her like an unwanted doormat all the time, yet she willingly accepts the humiliation and shame. She even declares that she is willing to get hit while the other is happy to hit her. She often throws derogatory remarks at the writer, indicating that neither his considerate deeds nor his foolish gaze can change anything. Her masochistic tendencies blind her from the writer's love and undermine her willpower to supersede self-loathing with love. To numb her heartache and despair, she mentally abuses the enamored writer who describes his pining in solitary silence.





Waiting for love

La Belle depicts the fruitless waiting of an infatuated writer and a lovely model. In his harmoniously sparse apartment, the writer awaits the love of his life, serenaded by books and accompanied by a pen. Writing his thoughts down allows him to dwell in her extended periods of absence, while dreaming of someone similar to la belle, but someone who genuinely loves him and never leaves him lonely again.





While waiting, he unceasingly tries to find meaning in all aspects of her existence, which makes his disconsolate heart tremble with fear. She always acts as if she will stay; nevertheless, he never knows when she will be desperately out of his reach again. His futile waiting leaves him not only more exposed to her absence, but also more vulnerable to her presence.





He once assures her that he will help her terminate her unhappy life if she is still unhappy ten or twenty years from then. Sadly, he is unable to wait that long; one day, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he strangles her to death, after realizing that she has never been, and will never be, happy despite all that he has faithfully done to bring her happiness. By ending her unhappy life, he also brings all the wistful waiting and passionate obsession to an end.





However, it is not only the writer who incessantly waits for la belle to change and reciprocate his love. While despising the writer's meek waiting, la belle is also waiting in vain for her tyrannical boyfriend to eventually accept her love. She relentlessly waits for the ringtones, regardless of what the writer is ardently doing to make her stay. When the phone finally rings, usually at unearthly moments, she answers it like an excited schoolgirl. Upon receiving a harsh command, she dashes out of the apartment without giving the writer the slightest glance. After some time, she drags her physically and emotionally drenched body back to the elegant apartment, often in a drunken frenzy or savagely beaten by the boyfriend. Still, he rescues her with welcoming arms, fully aware that she loves another man who not only does not love her but also perpetually assaults her. Just as the audience thinks that all the waiting is finally over, the ominous phone rings, and the vicious cycle of abrupt departing and prolonged waiting invariably starts.





END

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I really liked this movie! It was funny, angsty and had a good plot. I thought the whole movie would be just about dancing but was surprised to find that a development of a romance was a large part of the plot. There were some parts that did feel a little slow. The movie ended on a nice note.

I liked the leads and even with their large age gap they managed to convince me that their characters loved each other. Props to MGY who showed off excellent dancing skills. I can tell she had to work her butt off filming this movie.

I know I'll be watching this again in the future, just not right away.

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The Art of Seduction is an amazing movie. I laughed so much watching it that I cried.

The story isn't anything new, we've seen this in many other movies, but the way it's refreshing and very entertaining. On the comedy side I give it a definite 10. On the romantic side, it isn't as romantic, or at least not on the cheesy way most romantic comedies are. The main leads truly have a lot of chemistry together, so it felt like the kind of love story where you like someone because he or she outwits you and fascinates you and is completely unpredictable, opposed to the typical together forever love story.

I thought the letters and caption that went along with the movie to show what they were thinking were also hilarious. And also how they started discovering each other's lies and started the pranks.

The music was very funny, specially the sound effects when one of them "made a move" on the other.

Overall this is a great movie, specially to LYBO, alone or with a friend. So just sit back and enjoy the ride this wonderful movie offers you.

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OMG I was so stoked just to watch Parakiss, I was screaming at the opening credits. Like most I read the manga and watched the anime series, both made me eager to see the live action adaptation. Some live actions do NOT work but I really think this one did. I actually like the movie and probably will watch it again.

Most criticize the story line for the movie, and yes if you have seen the anime it is a watered down version of the original story. Look people they have to sell it to a general audience, so of course instead of seeing an awesome neon color, you are getting pastels. The ending was changed, parts are left out and a lot of it felt rushed. The characters are a watered down version from the original story as well, which kind of made me upset but I understand I guess. Miwako is not as colorful and child-like, Arashi is not as punk rockish or ecchi, and Isabella really looks like a dude playing a woman. They did get George's suave essence, but they missed how much of a jerk he was. Well I understand that you have to sell it, so it was ok.

They did leave out characters and story lines, so the story centered on George and Yukari, and her dreams which is cool, I would have wanted to see Miwako's sister though.

The only parts I really didn't like was the fashion (Where did they go to get all the clothes in the movie the 1980s?) and Yukari's model poses (she literally uses all the same ones!). Other than those, I loved seeing another interpretation of a great story that never quite felt completed. I loved the ending and seeing that many cute guys didn't hurt either.

p.s. Keiko can NOT cry. it was awful.

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So I have mixed opinions about this one. This is a really extraordinary movie, with extraordinary story and actors. I mean, it's like award worthy. But, still, there are a lot of things about that I didn't like.



The greatest thing about this story is that is something that feels real, that I think could've happened in real life, and probably did. It portrays the difference between love and lust, and how the world functioned at that time. I do think that it could've been better with less graphic scenes, or adult scenes, they weren't necessary, and in Asian context they used it to make it dirtier, something like "well he cheated on his boyfriend, which is indecent, so it doesn't matter if we throw in a couple of sex scenes because it already is immoral." Actually Asians tend to that with sex scenes, I've seen it in other movies and dramas.



The acting is completely superb. I mean, in real life both actors are straight and yet they made their gay and bi characters completely real and believable, you understand what's going through their minds and how the evolve. And besides, to take these roles was a risky choice because even in Hollywood this is like a "taboo" topic, now imagine in Asia, where they're a lot more conservative. I think the queen wasn't a main character, she actually wasn't that important, she only was there to create the conflict.



The music was awesome, it made the scenes deeper, and it gave you a more accurate knowledge of what was going on.



I will probably never rewatch this movie again, because even though it truly is a superb movie, I thought it was to raw and had too many sex scenes. Also, I didn't like the things that happened before the end, it was completely unnecessary, they just put it in there to create more drama and shock the viewer. This is a good movie, very real and cruel, so if you're looking for something with content, this is your movie, if you're looking for a romcom or something fun to watch, you probably won't like this one.

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Ok so I really liked the anime for the most part though I hated the end and I was completely prepared for the end when I finally got to watch the movie. I was so happily surprised by the movies end I had to give a higher rating because of it even though other parts were disappointing. I guess a lot of people didn't like the end because it wasn't like the anime. That was one of the things I hated about the anime. So personally I was very thrilled this ended different.

I do wish it had more romance and more passion and a better chemistry with the leads though. There were some changes but I liked some of them (like the end). I had to watch the end again just because. Not that it was fantastic, it wasn't at all but I was just so happy they changed the ending it didn't even bother me that it was like a minute long and I wanted a more finished thorough ending.

If I hadn't seen the anime I might have been more lost or more disappointed I don't know but you can't pack a whole series into one movie without losing something. Also the actors didn't really look much like the characters from the series either but they were cute. I guess they felt they had to tone it down a bit. George, yeah left something to be desired but I think some of that was because they left out all the sex and touchy feely parts. The anime Georgie was a poker face and I was never sure what he was thinking since he never said how he felt. In the movie I thought he expressed his feeling fairly well considering they never had sex in the movie. I will be watching it again.

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