The Isle | Film Review | Slant Magazine

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

The Isle **½

by Ed Gonzalez on July 28, 2002 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

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The Isle became something of a cult item after it left audiences at the Venice and Sundance film festivals a little on the queasy side. Indeed, the film's infamous fishhook-down-the-throat sequence could be the most repulsive image put to film since Pasolini fashioned feces as a lunch snack for his Salo kids. The Isle works neither as a parable for crippled male/female relationships nor as a study of isolation and fatal attractions. If the material feels like second-rate Oshima or third-rate Imamura, there's a reason: director Kim Ki-Duk is provocateur first and poet second. A mute-prostitute-cum-boat-proprietress is the liaison between a network of whores and the johns that live inside a series of colored fishing-shacks that float gently atop a mist-covered bay. While The Isle is both preposterous and thoroughly misogynistic, its vistas are incredibly beautiful to look at (a boat breaks through the mist and the boats nearby bob up in down as if on cue). Ki-Duk's use of the long shot is every bit as impressive as the means by which he juxtaposes the National Geographic snapshots with vulgar shock jolts. Though there isn't any obvious evolutionary discourse at play here, Ki-Duk does draw a fascinating parallel between his wounded protagonists and the fish that swims away after half its body is cut off and turned into an impromptu sushi snack.

Director(s): Kim Ki-Duk
Screenplay: Kim Ki-Duk
Cast: Suh Jung, Kim Yoo-Suk, Park Sung-Hee, Cho Jae-Hyung, Jang Hang-Sun
Distributor: Empire Pictures
Runtime: 89 min.
Rating: NR
Year: 2000