Burning (2 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Stuttgart White Nights Festival.

It's been named as a leading contender for the 2019 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm sorry to say that it's a prime example of a film that the critics love but film fans don't. It rambles on for 150 minutes, in which almost nothing happens. It's a mystery put together in the worst possible of ways. The director's method seems to be, "Instead of saying something directly, give ten clues and five contradictions, then leave the viewer to work it out for himself".

The plot goes round and round in circles, but here are the main lines:

Lee Jong-su is a young man who looks after his father's farm while he's in prison for attacking government officials. He meets a girl called Haemi, who used to go to his school. He doesn't recognise her because she used to be ugly. The only time he ever spoke to her was to tell her she was ugly, but now she's beautiful. Most girls in Haemi's position would want nothing to do with him, but she seduces him before going on a trip to Africa.

While she's in Africa he stays in her apartment to feed her cat. When she returns she's with Ben, a rich man that she met at the airport in Nairobi. He drives round the poor village in a Porsche, and his hobby is setting greenhouses on fire. A week later Haemi disappears, and when Lee visits Ben he finds out that he has a wife.

If you don't think that's much of a story for two and a half hours, you're right. Everything that happens happens slowly, and there are random events thrown in that have nothing to do with the plot. I don't care what the critics say. For me this is a film that should never have been made.