Program Note
Novelist Hak-kyu is forced to resign as a professor and becomes a lecturer at a cultural center in a small town due to sexual harassment scandals. Hak-kyu, who grumles the state of his own life, falls in love with a girl, Deokee who works at a ticket office in an amusement park. Though he is completely absorbed in the intense feeling he feels for the first time in his life, Hak-kyu leaves for Seoul as soon as he hears about his reinstatement. Eight years later, Deokee appears in front of Hak-kyu once again under the name of Se-jung. Scarlet Innocence interestingly twists¡¸ The Story of Shim Chung¡¹, which was regarded only as a boring educational tale emphasizing filial piety. Didn’t Shim Hak-kyu really know that Madam Ppangdeok is abusing his daughter Chungee? If so, why did he insist on living with her? In the film, while the viewpoint of his daughter, Chungee, is much weakened, it focuses on the destructive love of a selfish man, Shim Hak-kyu, and a woman, Deokee who was blinded by love. In a series of tragedies that are driven by two people who had no ability to look back on themselves, the melodrama’s willingness not to completely shatter the audience’s fantasies and ‘its highly contrived plot’ are interlinked. (KIM Yong-eon)