‘The Ugly’ Review: A Half-Told Tale of Memory and Beauty

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly follows the investigation into the decades-long disappearance of a blind stamp carver’s spouse. Hailed as a “residing miracle of Korea,” Lim Yeong-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo) is being profiled by a documentary crew when the skeletal stays of his spouse are unearthed. From there, the carver’s son, Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min), units out to study what occurred to his mom, Jung Younger-hee (Shin Hyun-been), 40 years in the past, and The Ugly proceeds to play a protracted recreation with audiences that frustrates excess of it illuminates.

With the assistance of the documentary’s shrewd producer, Kim Su-jin (Han Ji-hyeon), Dong-hwan interviews Younger-hee’s estranged household and her former co-workers, the latter of whom bear in mind seeing her as an object of ridicule. Some really feel guiltier than others for his or her remedy of her, and Dong-hwan is rattled by the mentions of his mom’s ugliness. Their disgust for her look doesn’t sq. with their understanding of her as a sort and ethical particular person.

All through the movie, Yeon intentionally places viewers within the sneakers of Dong-hwan and Su-jin, who don’t have any first-hand information of what Younger-hee seemed like. (Dong-hwan was a child when his mom died, and as such has no reminiscence of her.) It’s believed that no pictures of the lady exist, and when she’s seen in flashbacks, her face is saved out of body or obscured by her lengthy hair. At all times it feels just like the movie is constructing to some profound revelation round what she seems like, and for a whilst you maintain out hope that Yeon is chasing larger recreation.

The Ugly hints at attention-grabbing traces of inquiry—about herd mentality, the way in which preconceptions form the trajectory of a human life, and how conventional notions of magnificence are rooted in sight—and Park is quietly transferring in flashback because the younger Yeong-gyu. However the movie is extra within the whodunnit of its thriller, and its reply proves to be disappointingly anticlimactic.

Frequent although the movie’s flashbacks could also be, the oppressive social constructs of the previous are painted in such broad strokes as to render them unrecognizable. As for Dong-hwan and Su-jin, our intrepid investigators, they’re virtually ciphers. In a approach, then, The Ugly’s resolution to obscure Younger-hee’s face for thus lengthy proves becoming, as she’s a black gap the place a personality should be, emblematic of all the pieces else that feels absent from the movie.