FRANCE: Korean actress Yun Jung-Hee stars in 'Poetry' which is competing for the Palme d'Or in Cannes

Record ID: 1519709

  • Title: FRANCE: Korean actress Yun Jung-Hee stars in 'Poetry' which is competing for the Palme d'Or in Cannes
  • Date: 20th May 2010
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 19, 2010) (REUTERS) WIDE OF RED CARPET (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) ACTRESS ELIZABETH BANKS POSING ON RED CARPET VARIOUS OF CAST AND CREW OF 'POETRY' ON RED CARPET BEFORE SCREENING VARIOUS OF CAST AND CREW OF 'POETRY' ARRIVING IN RAIN FOR NEWS CONFERENCE
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2010 03:53
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAEOTT7CACOM7E9FZ1B2AW4R4F4
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Veteran South Korean actress Yun Jung-hee makes a powerful return to the screen after several years' absence in Lee Chang-dong's "Poetry", in competition at the Cannes film festival.
    Back in Cannes after his last appearance in 2007, when Jeon Do-yeon took the best actress award in his "Secret Sunshine", Lee said he had immediately thought of Yun Jung-hee, a monument of Korean cinema who had not made a film in more than 15 years.
    Like "Secret Sunshine", "Poetry" centres around the tragic aftermath of a child's death and both films are carried by outstanding performances from their female leads.
    Yun plays a woman bringing up her obnoxiously self-centred grandson in a drab provincial city where she works part time, cleaning and looking after a rich old man who has been incapacitated by a stroke.
    Worried by an alarming loss of memory and signs of physical weakness, she turns to a poetry class at a local cultural centre but she struggles to find inspiration and at the same time is confronted by a dreadful secret involving her grandson.
    "It's true that this is a film about poetry, but poetry here is more than simply a literary thing. Poetry refers to art and to the cinema, because I wanted to talk about the cinema and also I wanted to talk about all the invisible aspects of life - the things that can't be calculated or particularly can't be given monetary value," said Lee in a news conference after a screening of the film.
    He said he was driven to make the kind of movie he fears is dying out.
    "It is not just Korean cinema, I think this is a phenomenon one can see everywhere and I'm sure that other people share this view. I think that a certain type of cinema is now dying and that's the type of cinema that I've always been in love with, the type of cinema that I wanted to see and I wanted to make. That type of cinema is losing strength," he said.
    Jeon Do-yeon, who is back at Cannes in the dark and sexually charged "The Housemaid", was dubbed the "Queen of Cannes" in South Korea after her triumph in 2007 and Yun's performance could put her in contention for a similar honour this year.
    The actress, who now lives in Paris, said she had received several offers to return to work over the years but had never found any of them enticing enough until Lee got in touch saying he was writing a screenplay with her in mind.
    "It's very strange. We don't know one another very well but as soon as I received the screenplay I saw that yes, indeed this character was very much like me. For example, she's a dreamer, and I must say that's like me, and like me too she is I must say innocent, and a little bit out of step with life. So this why I was so happy to play this part, and it wasn't too difficult," she said.
    She added that the experience had sharpened her appetite for the cinema.
    "I want to go on working until I'm 90 at least," she said.
    The Cannes Film Festival runs until Sunday, May 23rd.
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