The Ugly
Yeon Sang-ho’s latest film explores the notion of emotional truth vs. factual truth, of who might be the more reliable narrator between two unreliable choices, and how we process family traumas from the past. If it resonates more with me than it might others, it’s because- at a moment of tension between my mother and I- I found out things about her life, and especially with regards to her relationship with her parents, that I will take to the grave. The reason isn’t because I don’t feel the need to process it, it’s because it makes more sense for me to process those feelings individually, rather than share them with people who either didn’t know any of them, or didn’t know them as well as I did. If I need to compartmentalize those feelings, I have tools in which I can do so. Im Dong-hwan (played by
Park Jeong-min), is doing just that at the end of “The Ugly,” and it’s understandable that people who aren’t him can’t understand that; sometimes, we just need to figure out how new information shapes our feelings about people for ourselves.
When we meet him, Im Dong-hwan is watching on as a documentary is made about his father, Im Yeong-gyoo (Kwon Hae-hyo), who is a famous blind artisan, when he gets an unexpected phone call. It’s from the police, who have information for him about his mother. He never knew his mother, who died four decades ago. They have found her remains. With guidance from the filmmaker making the documentary, Su-jin (Han Ji-hyeon), he starts to uncover the mystery of what happened to her. Where it takes them raises more questions than answers, however.
One of the things that Dong-hwan first learns as he tries to learn about his mother is that she was considered ugly, not just in appearance, but in how she kept herself. As the film goes on, we see flashbacks of the woman’s life as it is recounted to Dong-hwan and Su-jin go to interview people. For Su-jin, the focus of her documentary just got deeper, but for Dong-hwan, something darker happens. The story reveals a seedy side to his family’s history that is troubling, and causes much reconsideration of his father and his legacy. One of the tensest moments in the film is when they go to visit an old employer of his mother’s (played by Im Sung-jae), and what we think we’re going to learn from what we’ve already learned about the character throws our preconceived notions of the truth for a loop, especially when Dong-hwan confronts his father afterwards. The film’s psychological gauntlet is tense and fascinating, especially as the climax leaves us feeling unsure with how we feel about the main characters, regardless of how they seem at the end. This one really landed with me in compelling ways.
