#Film korea a tale of legendary libido movie#
#Film korea a tale of legendary libido series#

There’s even an admittedly fairly awful scene near the end that was already overtly racist when the movie first came out, and which has aged even more poorly since. Worse is the costuming, which is both completely ahistorical and in many cases, outright atrocious. But the first of the three 21st century reinterpretations was Garoojigi: A Tale of Legendary Libido.īefore I go any farther, I’ll just note that the movie certainly has its weak points: it departs radically from the original tale of Byeon Gang-soe, replacing a fair bit of its ribaldry and grimness with a mix of sappy romance and sex comedy very much in the style of the American Pie franchise.

( You can see bits of it here.) Another is basically an adult movie that comes up when you search the title “Garoojigi,” which isn’t likely to inspire much adventure, at least not for a D&D group. Still, reinterpretations are becoming more common in the 21st century: one, a live stage musical titled Madame Ong, has wowed audiences in Korea and France alike. Little wonder that, despite being one of just twelve pansori works created in the 18th century, it’s almost never performed anymore: like with Boccacio’s Decameron, ribald humor has gone somewhat out of style in our era. (Unfortunately, as far as I know, nobody’s thought to make a movie out that grisly/sexy denoument, though I think it’s prime Netflix material!)

#Film korea a tale of legendary libido series#

Not that they get to enjoy much wedded bliss: Byeon is lazy and shifty, and a misdeed against a neighboring village’s jangseung-a guardian totem pole supposed to protect the village from evil spirits-ultimately leads to his death halfway through the tale: the rest concerns the grisly comedy of Ongnyeo screwing a whole series of her later suitors to death and then having to get rid of the bodies. Well, he’s not quite for nothing: Byeon’s wife Ongnyeo is basically Korea’s Wife of Bath (from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), right down her nasty habit of screwing her husbands to death, and her sexual curse was such that no man could keep up with her until she met Byeon. The character Byeon Gang-soe is often summarized as a kind of “Korean Casanova” because both figures are famous for the same thing-the “legendary libido” alluded to in the title of this film-but beyond that one trait, the two have very little in common: while Casanova was a priest, a man of letters, a spy, and a con man, Byeon was a worthless good-for-nothing bum. Garoojigi: A Tale of Legendary Libido (2008), Directed by Sin Han-sol.