[HanCinema's Film Review] "A Frozen Flower"

A little over fifteen years ago, writer/director Yoo Ha followed up his relatively low-key cult title "A Dirty Carnival" with "A Frozen Flower" in the New Years Weekend box office. With 3.7 million admissions, doubling what "A Dirty Carnival" brought in, "A Frozen Flower" was fairly successful, if largely forgotten by time. Having seen it, I can understand why. "A Frozen Flower" is about the King of Goryeo, played by Joo Jin-mo, and his gay love affair with his bodyguard Hong-rim, played by Zo In-sung. And it is a very gay love affair- the first of many sex scenes is quite explicitly homosexual.

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Not that there's anything wrong with that. I was just a little surprised to see quite so much sex in any movie that predated "The Treacherous" by over six years. There's an unusually large amount of sex in "A Frozen Flower" even compared to other mainstream films from foreign countries. I'm honestly a little shocked so many people watched "A Frozen Flower" in theaters at all, since sex scenes this explicit are a little awkward to watch in group settings.

What's more, after the initial gay sex scene, subsequent sex scenes mostly just involve Song Ji-hyo, who plays the unnamed queen. Incidentally, there's a reason the king and queen aren't named here- "A Frozen Flower" doesn't even meet the theoretically plausible threshold that "Masquerade" did in 2012 for historical costume dramas. The whole movie is just a passionate sex triangle between the three leads, and frankly not a very convincing one.

Why the sex triangle is so unconvincing is a bit hard to pinpoint. All three of the leads are strong actors who before and after "A Frozen Flower" were perfectly convincing as other major historical figures. They're just too...melodramatic, isn't quite the right word, because it implies tragedy. The King of Goryeo is just weirdly controlling and jealous, and doesn't seem to take the whole "can't produce an heir" situation as seriously as he should.

Hong-rim is a whole weird story unto himself. We're introduced to the King of Goryeo's personal guards as children, with their showing duty so impossibly loyal they can't even take wives. Whether this is true of the historical Kunryongwe, I honestly have no idea. Probably not. Bear in mind that this particular bit of worldbuilding seems prompted mainly because the King of Goryeo is grooming Hong-rim from these early scenes to be his lover.

In short, there are a lot of ways that "A Frozen Flower" is gross and creepy, even by the standards of 2008. I can actually see what Yoo Ha is going for here- a lot of the more problematic elements here were explicitly praised artistically in "The King and the Clown" in 2005, particularly internationally. But "A Frozen Flower" has so little ambiguity by comparison, the best it can really do in between competent sex scenes and swordfights is remind me of better movies. Even the subplot about Yuan domination of the Goryeo state is so half-baked I mostly forgot it was even going on until the Kunryongwe manage to apprehend another fifth columnist.

Written by William Schwartz

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"A Frozen Flower" is directed by Yoo Ha, and features Zo In-sung, Joo Jin-mo, Song Ji-hyo, Shim Ji-ho, Lim Ju-hwan, Yeo Wook-hwan. Release date in Korea: 2008/12/30.