The Scarlet Letter (2004 film)

A cops lust for love threatens to get in the way of his professional life.

Contents

• The Scarlet Letter 2004
• Plot
• Cast
• Similar Movies
• Awards and nominations
• References

The Scarlet Letter is a 2004 South Korean film about a police detective who investigates a murder case while struggling to hang onto his relationships with his wife and mistress. It is the second film by La Femis-graduate and academic Byun Hyuk (Daniel H. Byun), and starred Han Suk-kyu, Lee Eun-ju, Sung Hyun-ah and Uhm Ji-won. The film debuted as the closing film of the Pusan International Film Festival in 2004.

Despite Lee Eun-jus prior experience with depicting sex and nudity in Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), she came under the scrutiny of Korean press and netizens, for the highly emotional sex scenes and the notorious "trunk scene" in The Scarlet Letter which is regarded as "one of the most shocking and intense scenes in the history of Korean film." It is speculated her demanding role and its public scrutiny, had compounded and overlapped with an existing variety of family, financial, career, and insomnia issues. Her severe depression ended in suicide in February 2005, and the tragic conclusion has since become the central focus in popular perception and interpretation of the film, this particular one being her last.

Director Kim Ki-duk, no stranger to controversy over his own films, is quoted by Chinese film magazine "Movie Watch" (???) in singling out The Scarlet Letter as among the key Korean dramas from recent years. He subsequently cast Sung Hyun-ah, who rose to prominence with her role in The Scarlet Letter, as the heroine in his Time.

At the films premiere in Japan, veteran actress Kumiko Akiyoshi praised the lead performances and likened the film to a landmark in erotic thrillers after Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction.

Policeman Ki-Hoon's life is duplicitous, oscillating between the amenable, newly pregnant wife and a very appealing mistress- the singer Ga-yee. His world gets shaken up when he gets news during a murder investigation that Ga-yee is pregnant and her obsession with him rules out abortion as an option. In a very twisted chance of fate, Ki-hoon and Ga-yee end up locked in the trunk of his car on the side of the road as raw despair brings to light the shocking truth about his wife and his mistress.