This movie was a great disappointment. Kim Ki Duk wrote it in some kind of trance so lost in his own world that it's hard for outsiders to fully grasp his thoughts. And then came Shin Yeon-Shick and took that script way too literally creating a boring, vague mess which dragged starting from the first minute. Acting was quite good though, but I I felt like the script + directing must have been way too obscure and there were too many characters so no one really got to show their real potential. Ma Dong Seok was the only one who managed to stand out and literally shine. He is the only one I remember when I think about the movie. Lee Joon did great job, but had too weak of a presence. The beginning scene and the ending scene are both too long and repetitive, to the point that they have no desired impact. This movie is about a rise and fall of an actor, so it makes a lot of sense to have these almost identical scenes to complete the message. But that theater scene is just way too vague and boring and it barely makes any sense. How I understood it was that Oh Young was talking to himself not the woman. In the beginning the director of the play told him that if he doesn't want to acknowledge his co actress then he should go talk to a mannequin doll that is... to himself. He talks to the doll, imagines it to be the actress, he wants to go to the beginning and start over on a better note. "I wish we could go to how we were." He is talking to himself, he wants to go back to being himself and get free from the role he had been trapped into. The actress says in the beginning "If we get a chance, I hope we could do it again." So in his imagination he looks for her because he believes that she can help him. She also fell from her position and ended up on the stage of that theater. She was starting over and he was only starting. That's what Oh Young realizes only at the end of the movie when he mentally goes back to that stage. The script is about love, but Oh Young doesn't talk about love, he talks about himself and his own desires. "Getting back together and loving someone" is all about getting himself back to reality and learning to love himself. He finally sees himself in that woman. "I'm not that bad, see?" he tries to convince himself. That's why in the end he finally gets his role right, he finally understands what acting is all about. Not losing yourself but being what you are. Oh Young is a narcissist and he has no control of himself whatsoever, when he gets into a role he really gets into it for good. After he leaves the theater he gets to play gangsters on the big screens and he becomes that gangster because he gets too immersed into his roles. His only role models were the cocky actors, show business gangsters, and his manager who tries to whore him around. Oh Young gets out of control and lives his life like there are no consequences of anything he does, he rapes women and hangs out with questionable people. He is bad yet I was left wishing that his character would have been darker. His only link to reality is his mother but since he Lee Joon doesn't get deep enough into the darkness the contrast between Oh Young who talks to his mother on Oh Young who has turned bad, that contrast is not strong enough. At some point, Oh Young meets the gangster who almost makes him sell his life for something scary, Oh Young's cousin saves him, but apparently that was not enough for him to grasp the reality. By the way, notice that the gangster man was the only one who actually respected Oh Young, he is the only one who acknowledges the boy after his fall. No matter what, Oh Young loves acting and even after falling down he gets up and starts over, even if that means becoming a punching bag again. But now we see that other new actor has become cocky too, immersed in his own fame. Everyone falls in this movie, everyone goes up and down except those on the top, the gangsters and the directors, they stay at their respective places. Actors are just tools to them. For sensitive viewers, this movie might be too hard of a nut to crack. A lot of people were shocked that Lee Joon's character actually raped someone. Get a grip people, this is a movie about those kind of issues. Pay attention to the summary and warnings. Overall, I fount the script too messy. This film tried to be very artistic but tried too much thus failed miserably. The message was displayed too vaguely but not vaguely enough and at the same time too blatantly but too vaguely to be gritty in a cool way, there was no sensibility whatsoever. So instead of being cool the movie turned out lame. Nothing had an impact and everything just melted into a dull draggy boredom.