The Turning Road (2017)

Gay-themed short film, not BL

Warning: not a happy ending

It is easy to tell what is happening in this short film, but it is much more difficult to say why everything is happening.

We know it is practically love at first sight for Soon-ho, the delivery boy who frequently delivers Yu-jin's meals to him. In contrast to how transparent Soon-ho is as a character, Yu-jin is very much opaque to the end. Perhaps it is meant to be this way--the intention could be to show the struggles of a gay man who won't know the attitudes of other people towards him when they find out he is gay. There can be a 180-degree change in attitude.

Yet the film is can be rather baffling. The simplest reading is probably that Yu-jin is homophobic and turns nasty when he realises that Soon-ho is gay. But it is anyone's guess when Yu-jin discovers it--does he assume that Soon-ho is gay when he sees Soon-ho sniffing his (Yu-jin's) shirt? If so, why does he have no apparent immediate reaction to Soon-ho (whose action actually is admittedly inappropriate)? In fact, he proceeds to start eating his meal without seeming affected until he picks up a piece of friend pork and pauses . . .

Perhaps Yu-jin is put off by Soon-ho's action (not necessarily because he is homophobic but because he finds it disturbing). Or perhaps he is actually homophobic. Or perhaps he is trying to repress his own sexuality and emphasize his supposed heterosexuality by getting a woman to go to his apartment at the time when he knew Soon-ho would turn up, acting intimate with this woman AND even telling her about the delivery boy who is gay. Things would be easier to grasp if we can see malice or cruelty in Yu-jin as the woman taunts Soon-ho, but he keeps quiet and appears quite expressionless (perhaps even coldly hesitant). After closing the door at Soon-ho, he says something sexual to the woman (despite not even showing any interest in her while Soon-ho is looking at them), but is he deliberately saying it loudly enough for Soon-ho to hear?

It is easy to focus on Soon-ho's heartbreak and his friendship with his employer. However, Yu-jin is ultimately the truly intriguing character. I do wish there were more in the film to nudge us towards a more concrete interpretation of Yu-jin's character. He is either a really poorly written and acted flat character or an unsuccessful attempt at creating a truly interesting character within the span of 20 minutes.

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A short queer story : interesting point of view but too short to really leave a memorable impression

This very short movie (a bit more of 15 minutes excluding the outro generic) is centered around a delivery guy from a Chinese restaurant who has a crush on one of his customer.

The story shows in snippets of life experience of the main character how difficult it is to be gay and accepted in South Korea. The intentions are good but it is too short to really get deep into the discrimination details and it remains at a quite superficial level. Similarly to the story, the characters are very simply brushed up, not for lack of care but rather because of lack of time to deepen them more.

I don't think the cast did a bad job but neither is it very memorable. I found the camera work quite sluggish and maybe a bit too slow, which dragged the storytelling.

I would not recommend this to people because I have seen other short films that impacted me more around similar thematic. I feel here it remains at a relatively superficial level which prevented me to really connect with the story.

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