Barking Dogs Never Bite

Flandersui gae

(South Korea, 2000, 106 mins, 35mm)

Madison Premiere

writer: Bong Joon-ho, Song, Ji-ho, Derek Son Tae-woong
cinematographer: Cho Yong-kyou, Jo Yeong-gyu
editor: Lee Eun Soo
original music: Jo Sung-woo
production designer: Lee Hang Lee
costume designers: Choi Yun-jung
executive producer: Tcha Sung-Jai
producer: Cho Min-hwan
cast: Lee Sung-jae, Bae Doo-na, Byeon Hie-bong, Kim Ho-jung, Kim Roe-ha, Seong Jeong-seon

The first feature film by Bong Joon-Ho, whose three other features are presented at the Festival, Barking Dogs Never Bite introduces many elements that repeat in his later films: a hapless young man (in this case, a timid graduate student bullied by his pregnant wife and waiting for a teaching post); a snack shop; a flying karate kick to knock the wing mirror off a car; the notion that all of us are capable of crimes both large and small. Here, the graduate student, Yun-ju, is frazzled by the incessant yapping of a small dog somewhere in the hallways of the large apartment complex. Pent-up frustrations give way to comic attempts to find the dog and stop its barking. Set entirely within the grounds of the complex, including the dank basement storage area and nearby leafy park, the film “sets in motion a pitch-black comic plot in which a janitor with a taste for dog soup and a spacey bookkeeper with a hero complex also figure prominently…. Dogs may be minor compared with the elegant Memories of Murder and the high-octane Host, but it’s funny from start to finish.” – Mike Hale, New York Times.

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