Thirst (2009)

Love does not condone nor condemn our thirsts’ but rather it is how we quench it for our own redemption!

Universal Pictures in association with Moho Films, CJ Entertainment and Focus Features present…

Based on Emile Zola’s novel Therese Raquin, a tale that has been told a thousand times over but with the subtlety, simplicity and yet nothing pleases the voracious lust for blood and flesh!

A man of God learning and yearning to discover a cure for the patients’ seemingly incurable disease, wants to be a part of an experiment that will either leave him dead or forever walk in the land of the living! He volunteered for this missionary work that will make him as one with the community of Lepers. Unknowingly, he doesn’t realize the horror this will bring upon him! As months passed by, his condition worsened and on a fateful day he was declared dead by the hospital staff…or so it seems!

Searching for an answer, he left the community with more questions to his predicament. He came back to the monastery as a Saint, people declaring that he was the only person who survived this ordeal. He soon left the monastery and found solace in a village continuing his work. As he was performing parlor tricks for a sick child, a woman was tapping the window who is in need of a priest to heal her son.

Upon meeting the family he soon falls for the son’s wife, she was not hard to please since she yearns for a man unlike his pathetic, loser of a husband. Soon the two are coveting, meeting night after night when they finally realized a shared goal… to be together and dispose the son. A fishing trip, a murder scene and to make it worse, the mother got into a stroke due to the pain of losing her son. The Priest took refuge in their home, a cabinet for a coffin, a desperate, pathetic ghost and a trip to the watering hole… i meant blood bar just too wet his whistle.

The Priest (not by virtue) played by Song Kang-Ho (Memories of Murder) and his paramour portrayed by Ok-Bin Kim (Dasepo Naughty Girls) would soon find themselves into awkward situations like looking for blood and trying to kill each other, but to no avail. The passive Priest and the aggressiveness of the woman he loves got in the way most of the time while giving her the benefit of the doubt that they need to survive. Feeling lost, he cannot condone this kind of life anymore and he decided to end it the best way he knows how.

Without further hesitation and as a last resort to end their rampage, he drove to a place where the sun shines and end this pain for both their sakes. Together with the Mother, they had this comedic run on things which the woman tried her best to not experience the heat of the sun rising, hiding in the trunk, tugging the trunk door and slipping underneath the car but she soon realizes that the end was near and the only thing that is waiting for them both is the light of their redemption.

The ending scene was touching and even though she cried so much they found themselves in each other’s arms even at death… even putting emphasis on the shoes he gave her the first time he shown compassion for the woman who had blisters on her feet.

The story that permeates drama, comedy and a forbidden love story!!! With a whole new twist, wonderfully shot sequences and delivery of actors. Director Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy) brings to the screen this gothic tale of two doomed lovers locked in an impeccable torment of passion and for those people around them who were taken in by the maelstrom of murder. I admired the take on the film and how it condones the relationship of a Priest and a young woman yearning for a purpose and some adventure! The ending even gave a bitter sweet lesson that life is what we make it and although Father Sang-Hyeon wanted only to save lives, instead he created an uncontrollable monster…it was a painful truth but they made the needed redemption so that others will live.

Ok-Bin gave a phenomenal performance seeing from the Director who chose her when she was only 22 years old, she already had the versatility of capturing a woman torn up inside and seizes her door mat personality to a monstrous predator on the rise! While her counterpart did not even have training but did very well in choosing his career after getting a degree in Broadcasting and work on plays using only instinctive acting and improvisation. He even got the chance to work with the Director and his notorious films “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” and became a well sought after leading man in South Korean cinema.

The Director also gave us outstanding films from the Vengeance series and even co-wrote the screenplay that was absolutely entertaining and fun to watch. Since he has been known to convey stories with black humor and the cold harsh reality of what life can truly bring to someone who experienced so much hardship and pain and still find the reason to move on with life until fate caught up with them…

The film gives even more emphasis on chances or happenstance since it allows the plot to linger a bit further connecting the disparages of the belittled wife and the resurrection of a Priest once a man of faith and of the Lord Jesus Christ who now seeks his own urges that gives the meeting of the two a befitting force that when they collided, all fell by their hands without any remorse nor control for their unwavering thirst!