SOUTH KOREA: THE FILM "TOO YOUNG TO DIE" ABOUT REAL LIFE ELDERLY ROMANCE SHOWING THE HUMAN SIDE OF SENIOR CITIZENS AND THEIR SEX LIVES.

Record ID: 393039

  • Title: SOUTH KOREA: THE FILM "TOO YOUNG TO DIE" ABOUT REAL LIFE ELDERLY ROMANCE SHOWING THE HUMAN SIDE OF SENIOR CITIZENS AND THEIR SEX LIVES.
  • Date: 1st October 2002
  • Summary: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Korean) FILM CRITIC JEON CHAN-IL SAYING: "With our society changing fast, I am almost sure that the film has no problem as far as public viewing, contrary to the KMRB's worries."
  • Embargoed: 16th October 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
  • Country: South Korea
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5XXJIOO8SQR8THSINAZU6ALXY
  • Story Text: A South Korean film about a real-life elderly romance has smashed stereotypes about the aged, but a steamy septuagenarian sex scene has censors working overtime to keep it off screens in this Confucian society.
    Director Park Jin-pyo's romantic drama "Too Young To Die" received positive reviews this year in the non-competitive section of the Cannes Film Festival and has been invited to screen at contests as far aways as Jerusalem and Toronto.
    At a South Korean festival, younger viewers said the film opened their eyes to the human side of senior citizens, while some older filmgoers said it made them rethink taboos about sex.
    But the film depiction of the love life of a couple the 36-year-old Park met while filming a documentary on the elderly has twice been declared "unfit for public viewing" by the Korea Media Rating Board (KMRB).
    What pushed Park's film "beyond the acceptable boundaries of public taste", according to the KMRB, is a seven-minute scene showing the elderly couple making love -- complete with explicit oral sex scenes that show the man's penis.
    Park describes the scene -- filmed in an empty room with just a camera and the actual couple -- as "the most beautiful love in the world".
    He and his production company refuse to cut the scene or blur it digitally. They are appealing the censors' decision on the grounds that the sequence is integral to the telling of the love story.
    "To the couple, making love is evidence they are alive.
    Will viewers accept it as authentic if there are no shots of them making love, oral sex, and the exposure of a male sexual organ?" Park told Reuters.
    In an interview Park said he was inspired by widower Park Chi-gyu, 72, and Lee Sun-ye, a widow one year younger. After years of loneliness following their spouses' deaths, they met at a senior citizens centre and fell in love at first sight.
    The life-changing romance finds them living together and holding a small wedding ceremony. The man teaches his new wife to write and she teaches him to sing -- and together they rediscover the long-forgotten joys of an active sex life.
    "When I met them for the first time, I realised they were in beautiful love -- love not at all different from young people's love. I wanted to depict their moments together as a kind of poetry in my film," he said.
    What was beautiful love to Park and film critics, however was seen as a dangerous precedent by the censors, one of whom told Reuters the board feared they would be unable to stop other films showing genitalia or oral sex if they cleared "Too Young To Die".
    Not all critics or even KMRB members agreed. Three censors including Cho Young-kag (pronounced YOUNG-KAHK), resigned over the decision.
    "I don't think this film is pornographic just because it depicts the images of making love or a male sexual organ -- (it shows the active lovemaking scenes of an old couple), So it can be permitted for public viewing, for viewers over 17 years old," Cho told Reuters.
    The dispute has triggered a backlash against the decision, which film critics say is out of step from a society that has come a long way from its puritanical Confucian heritage.
    "With our society changing fast, I am almost sure that the film has no problem as far as public viewing, contrary to the KMRB's worries," said film critic Jeon Chan-il (pronounced CHAHN-IL).
    Jeon said the decision was for the filmmaker and his audience to make.
    The controversy aside, Park's debut feature has given young South Koreans -- deferential but often distant from the elderly -- a fuller human picture of senior citizens.
    "Until I saw 'Too Young To Die,' describing elderly people's lives, I had never thought about it. I came to understand that old people are not different from young people," 28-year-old Chang Jeong-sook said.
    "Yes, I saw that it (elderly people making love) was possible," Chang added, laughing.
    Interviews with elderly men gathered in several parks in South Korea's capital Seoul found strong support for the idea of sex after seventy, and men well into their eighties saying they were still up to the task even without viagra.
    But the men said women were less supportive -- evidence of the continuing sway of Confucianism, they said.
    "My wife is not willing to do it -- she agrees only if I plead for it, not often though," said 83-year-old Myong Sah-oh, who lives with his 74-year-old wife.
    Another 83-year-old man, Kim Jeh-hah, said cultural and family concerns kept him on the sidelines a decade after his wife passed away.
    "I thought about women for several years, but I did not do anything, Why not? I have to save face in the eyes of my children," Kim said.
    --
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