parkchanwook.org - If You Were Me

If you were me
<Yeoseot gae ui siseon>

Director: Park Chan-wook (segmento N.e.p.a.l.)

Writings: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Ji-hyeon, Oh Dal-su

N.e.p.a.l. is the acronym for Never Ending Peace And Love and it’s the title of Park Chan-wook’s episode which contributes to an initiative launched by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Its aim is to produce a feature film which gathers some of the most important North Korean directors to give their interpretation of the human rights, the project’s common theme. The outcome is If You Were Me which, apart from Park Chan-wook, the likely reason of the movie’s success (which will lead to a sequel), counts episodes directed by Jeong Jae-eun, Park Jin-pyo, Park Kwang-su, Yeo Kyun-dong and Yim Soonrye. In his short film, Park devotes himself to an interesting directing experimentation starting from a real news story. It tells the ordeal of Chandra Kumari Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant who moved to Korea to travel in a factory. After a working-class uprising she ends up on the streets of Seoul, and she’s taken firstly to an hospital where the staff doesn’t even understand where she is from, and then to a mental hospital. After some discordant and perfunctory diagnosis, the woman is forced to remain into the mental hospital for six years because she’s not familiar with the local language. Park wants to awaken the audience to an hidden racial issue which doesn’t reveal itself with expressions of anti-Semitism, but that is deep-rooted in the prejudice of the average citizen, who is so blind as to deny the evidence of facts. The direction, framed in a stylish black and white which reveals Park’s desire of producing a feature film with this kind of photography, has a double structure which alternates mockumentaries with some interviews with actors who play the role of the Nepalese woman’s attenders, and long sequences with the protagonist in first-person, as to literally show us Chandra’s distressing situation with her eyes. Among the director’s favourite works, N.E.P.A.L. shows his sophisticated, artistic and human sensitivity.


	If you were me <Yeoseot gae ui siseon> Director: Park Chan-wook (segmento N.e.p.a.l.) Writings: Park Chan-wook Cast: Lee Ji-hyeon, Oh Dal-su N.e.p.a.l. is the acronym for Never Ending Peace And Love and it’s the title of Park Chan-wook’s episode which contributes to an initiative launched by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Its aim is to produce a feature film which gathers some of the most important North Korean directors to give their interpretation of the human rights, the project’s common theme. The outcome is If You Were Me which, apart from Park Chan-wook, the likely reason of the movie’s success (which will lead to a sequel), counts episodes directed by Jeong Jae-eun, Park Jin-pyo, Park Kwang-su, Yeo Kyun-dong and Yim Soonrye. In his short film, Park devotes himself to an interesting directing experimentation starting from a real news story. It tells the ordeal of Chandra Kumari Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant who moved to Korea to travel in a factory. After a working-class uprising she ends up on the streets of Seoul, and she’s taken firstly to an hospital where the staff doesn’t even understand where she is from, and then to a mental hospital. After some discordant and perfunctory diagnosis, the woman is forced to remain into the mental hospital for six years because she’s not familiar with the local language. Park wants to awaken the audience to an hidden racial issue which doesn’t reveal itself with expressions of anti-Semitism, but that is deep-rooted in the prejudice of the average citizen, who is so blind as to deny the evidence of facts. The direction, framed in a stylish black and white which reveals Park’s desire of producing a feature film with this kind of photography, has a double structure which alternates mockumentaries with some interviews with actors who play the role of the Nepalese woman’s attenders, and long sequences with the protagonist in first-person, as to literally show us Chandra’s distressing situation with her eyes. Among the director’s favourite works, N.E.P.A.L. shows his sophisticated, artistic and human sensitivity.