[HanCinema's Film Review] "Hidden Face"

Seong-jin (played by Song Seung-heon) is a middle aged conductor who's heartbroken when his fiance Soo-yeon (played by Cho Yeo-jeong) breaks up with him seemingly out of nowhere. Seong-jin tries to mend this heartbreak via a probably unethical relationship with Mi-joo (played by Park Ji-hyun), a new violinist in his orchestra. There are a lot of twists from this point, the most important of which is spoiled by the trailer. But then, as a remake of a thirteen year old Spanish film, "Hidden Face" can't expect that many surprises.

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The first, immediate standout quality of "Hidden Face" is the strong use of lighting. Initially, in the first part of the film, the lighting depicts the generally somber mood of Seong-jin. But with surprisingly little real change, the ominous shading has completely different undertones when the story better contextualizes what's going on from the perspective of Soo-yeon and Mi-joo. While Seong-jin turns out to not be quite so dumb as he looks, he's still outclassed by the female leads.

This aspect of "Hidden Face" brought me to an unusual comparison. The movie is surprisingly similar to "The Handmaiden" albeit mostly in narrative structure. The subtext is quite different. None of the three leads is very smart, or even really pretends to be very smart. It quickly becomes clear, for example, that despite Seong-jin acting like he had a broken heart in the first act, his feelings about Soo-yeon were quite a bit more ambivalent than the viewer is led to believe from the misleading opening.

Soo-yeon is also in an intriguing position. Even if you know what the premise of the movie finally turns out to be (it's only textually explained about half an hour in), it's not immediately obvious how her first appearance makes sense in the context of that story. Explicit sex scenes notwithstanding, "Hidden Face" is making a pretty clear point about how just having sex with someone doesn't mean you know them. Whether Seong-jin really understands either of the other main characters remains ambiguous by the film's end.

And just to be clear, this is because the movie ultimately isn't really about Seong-jin at all. He's not really much more than a toy for either of the other leading roles. The sex scenes are actually quite appropriate in that context because when seen shirtless, Seong-jin is indeed attractive enough that it's plausible for both Soo-yeon and Mi-joo to want to be with him. Additionally, Seong-jin is just foolish enough we can see how he can remember the best of his girlfriends while blocking out the worst.

Those are just the character centered themes of the film. In terms of presentation, "Hidden Face" is excellent, consistently managing to be tense without really having any especially sympathetic characters. Even the queer ending is oddly believable, because all of these people are just so...weird, in a way that defies clear categorization. This is appropriate enough, or else they wouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place.

Written by William Schwartz