Hee-il Lee-song | 남쪽으로 간다 (Namjokeuro Ganda) (Going South) / 2012

freedom dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hee-il Lee-song (screenwriter and director) 남쪽으로 간다 (Namjokeuro Ganda) (Going South) / 2012 [45 minutes]

 

In this near feature-length South Korean film, Gi-tae (Kim Jae-Heung), soon to end his military service, is called in to report, and asks his former military sergeant Jun-young (Jeon Sin-hwan) to drive him back to the base.

     What we don’t realize until further into this masterful mystery-like movie, is that during his former service time the sergeant has had a sexual affair with the private, and the two had developed a loving relationship. Since his retirement, however, the former sergeant is studying for a new position and now has a girlfriend.

      Yet Gi-tae is not about to give up on the relationship and determines to kidnap his former lover in order to convince him that they still are a viable couple. He stops for a coffee along the way, drugging the driver’s drink with sleeping pills, and when Jun-young passes out at the wheel, Gi-tae drags his body to the rider’s sea and takes over as driver, heading south away from the base, going AWOL in the process. He destroys Jun-young’s cellphone to make certain that he cannot get messages or call for help.

      When Jun-young wakes up and vomits in reaction to the drugs, he realizes what has taken place in the mad mind of his former sexual partner, calling him a crazy faggot and attempting to convince him that their sexual activities were simply a result of being in the army, arising from the loneliness in such situations and the common practice of many such soldiers simply to relieve their sexual urges. It’s like playing with your buddies when you’re little, touching each other’s dicks, Jun-young insists. The relationship, he proclaims, meant nothing, and certainly no longer has any relevance to his life. He reminds Gi-tae that he likes women.

      But Gi-tae, and perhaps the knowledgeable gay audience immediately perceives that the former sergeant is merely trying to erase his homosexual feelings, attempting to eradicate and tamp down desires he has still today.

      Gi-tae counters, “Just because you get lonely, do you hold someone’s hand in the guard post like that?” He asks him to recall what he said every time he groped him the supply depot.

      Jun-young wrestles his former young charge for the car keys, and attempts to convince him to return to the base, all to no avail. Gi-tae—in a mad version of a road trip that can only remind one of the new queer works of Gregg Araki, particularly The Living End (1993)—is willing to give up everything, his freedom (if arrested), his body, and even his sanity to convince Jun-young that he is, in fact, still in love with the young boy who fucked him on the military base when he was in charge.

     He “meows” like a cat, reminding Jun-young of his own playful noises when, dressed in undershorts festooned with cats, he was first fucked by Gi-tae. And he successfully seduces him again, almost bringing him to ejaculation before Jun-young recognizes that he is being photographed—whether to document and prove to Jun-young his own sexual desires or for later blackmail is not made clear—Jun-young chasing down the now naked Gi-tae to obtain the camera. Finally grabbing him around the neck, is about to slam a boulder into his head, but cannot complete the act and falls back, allowing the soldier to escape his grasp.

    The voyage continues until they run of gas, Jun-young still trying to get Gi-tae to return to duty, while the soldier continues to attempt to get the former sergeant to admit that their relationship was actually love, not just a vagary of army life.

       But Jun-young, acknowledging that perhaps Gi-tae is right, simply admits also that he cannot change his closeted denial, that he cannot break free from the pretend normality that he has since his military career come to embrace. Jun-young walks off, back toward civilization, while Gi-tae, now with nowhere to go, and no one to take any place to where he might wish to escape, simply dances by the side of the car.

       It is a kind of Medea-like dance of justice—he has after all made his former lover see, if only for a moment, who he truly is—and a dance of freedom. Despite the likelihood of his arrestment, he has now fully accepted his sexual identity and has been willing to go to war for love. If nothing else, Jun-young will now be forced to remember his romance with a soldier.

      This truly complex and profound film, would benefit with multiple viewings given its subtlety and the shifting realizations of both of its characters.

 

Los Angeles, January 16, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).