Synopsis
This piece visits the past and present through threads of imagination woven into historical facts. First, a story of the past. Non Gae, a famous performer from the Josoen Dynasty, swears to take revenge against Japanese invaders after seeing the Jinju fortress toppling down, and the man she used to serve, CHOI Gyeong Hoe, die. Non Gae lures the Japanese commander, Kimura, toward a cliff next to the ocean to party and attempts to jump off dragging the commander down with her. But Kimura foresees her plans and brushes her off while she falls to her death with her wrist cut open. However, not long after that Kimura discovers odd wounds appearing on his body and is haunted by Non Gae's ghost every night eventually driving himself closer to insanity. Second, a story from the present. Lost in the deep mountains, Seung Hyeon (CHOI Gyeong Hoe in the past) lies unconscious from an accident to soon be rescued by a mountain ranger, but he has lost part of his memory. The only key to his lost memory is the diary he carried around in his bag. Seung Hyeon learns from this diary his name and some basic facts about himself. He also discovers he had come to the mountain with his girlfriend (Non Gae in the past), who is a botany major, in search of a rare plant. As he beings to slowly regain his memory, Seung Hyeon recalls there was a young guide (Kimura in the past) and it was him who endangered them.Resurrection of the Butterfly is based on the tale of Non Gae that all Koreans are familiar with and links the two fantasy worlds from the past and present adding reincarnation as one the underlying motives of the story. The film is a traditional historical horror play in the sense that it deals with a Non Gae's ghost haunting her enemy for revenge, but it also turns into a thriller film in the second half which is mainly based on the love and hate of three reincarnated lovers from the past. The past and present, history and imagination, horror and thriller, all worlds co-exist in this single film. LEE Jung Gook, the director of The Letter, and KIM Min Sook, who won much attention with her short film , co-directed the film, one taking on the past and the other the present. (JUNG Ji Yeon)