p-stepien Kim Ki-Duk is a bit of a celebrity down here in Poland, especially in the art circles. This position was a bit hurt by his immense failure of a movie "Time", but memories of past glory persist. "Dream" was therefore awaited with clenched fists and some drool pouring from the mouths of critics."Dream" tells a story of two people - a man and a woman - whose lives become intertwined by a weird twist of fate. Apparently when they both sleep the man dreams, whilst the women ends up sleepwalking and executing the dream. When this reality folds they unwillingly start connecting their lives together - they attempt various schemes to solve the issue - with more or less limited results. Will they be able to stop the dreams? Will the dreams connect them eternally or destroy them? The movie itself fails to make any such impression asthe director's glorious predecessors, but thankfully it is watchable, if extremely flawed. To a large part the movie is even enjoyable, thanks to it's slightly slapsticky humour focused on methods of trying not to fall asleep. In the meantime issues of love, solitude, connection are hardly dealt with or are subtly touched. That is until the final third, when the movie increasingly and unsuccessfully goes into "Old Boy" territory plus some cheesy Korean love flick. The romance doesn't work and isn't believable, while the grand finale instead of being somber and melancholic ends up being laughable and... cheesy.Definitely not the corn on the cob any fan of Kim Ki Duk was expecting. But I least several times I had a good honest laugh (as intended hopefully by the director, although I wasn't always sure). The problem remains however the impossibility to turn a blind eye on the slightly ridiculous last 30 minutes, even more so due to the fact that it was so out of focus from the less serious start to it.And not even the beautiful cinematography can help with this movie playing out like a Brazilian soap with a supernatural twist to it...

DICK STEEL Someone mentioned to me once that the films by Kim Ki-duk is like an acquired taste. Personally I had not taken that advice and dove into the deep end, only to find myself stuck in a confluence of mixed feelings, where some of the films had excited, others had disappointed going nowhere, though you must admit that there are always plenty of imagery in his films to admire, and a premise like none other.Within the first 20 minutes, we get introduced to the main characters, and the interesting, though weird premise that they find themselves in. Jo Odagiri stars as Jin, a man who often finds himself dreaming about some very vivid events, then out of curiosity one day, he visits an accident site that he dreamt about, and lo and behold, the exact same situation that he had seen subconsciously.His curiosity led him to dig further, and here he comes across Ren (Lee Na-yeong), a woman who sleepwalks. In more bizarre terms, Jin soon realizes that whatever he dreams of, Ren somehow will sleepwalk and execute it on his behalf, in real time. Hence the stage is set for this fantastical movie, where a couple find themselves having power over each other, and made more acute when they discover that perhaps their respective ex-lovers have got a part to play in their predicament as well.You'd come to expect that perhaps Jin and Ren would fall for each other, and this was even suggested at, but of course Kim Ki-duk would never go for the plain and ordinary. Instead he skews this potential love story into something more intense, and comical even especially when the couple try their very best not to fall asleep, one to prevent executing things against her wishes, while the other not wanting to impose his will onto another.Alas the ingredients that went into the film turned out to be not my taste. Everything went really weird especially when Kim settled for some gory moments of imagery to continue his story, some of which are squirmish enough to want to make you shut your eye from the nightmare. Also, having Jo Odagiri speak in Japanese throughout, and the only character to do so, seemed too strange as well, where everyone else was speaking in Korean. I suppose like Kim's earlier film in casting Chang Chen resulted in his character being mute, was nothing more than overcoming a technical challenge in making the actors speak the Korean language. Straddling the thin line between reality and fantasy would have afforded a tale told in this manner, but certainly this wasn't my cup of tea.The Closing Film of this year's Korean Film Festival, those in attendance will attest to bewildered voices whispering sighs of disapproval and sniggering at how ridiculous the film had unravelled itself into. I suppose if not for Jo Odagiri's role, many would have not batted an eyelid at yet another Kim Ki-duk offering for the masses. Was I disappointed? Yes, as the film could have been much more rather than a self-indulgent movie.

Andrei In this unusual and slightly ominous romantic fantasy from Korea, Joe Odagiri stars as Jin, a young man who experiences a foreboding nightmare about a traffic accident and feels compelled, upon waking, to travel to the same spot he visited in the dream. As it turns out, a hit-and-run accident indeed occurred there; curious, Jin tails the police to the home of the suspect - a beautiful young woman named Ran (Lee Na-Young) who vehemently denies involvement and cites, as an alibi, the fact that she slept the entire night. Jin relays the specifics of his dream to the cops and insists that they arrest him; they dismiss him as a crank and arrest Ran instead, but in time the young man and woman discover a bizarre pattern: when he dreams of specific events, she acts out those events in real life.

regnarghost A man and a woman's life becomes entangled as she does what he dreams, or in other cases,he experiences what she does while sleepwalking. Its a storyline that Kim-Duk should feel right at home with. And for the first twenty five minutes or so it looks promising. Rich atmosphere with tasteful use of music. I was just waiting for him to really start WORKING with the story and ideas at hand.I don't think he does that. To me it looks like Kim-Duks abandons much of his graceful soul-searching in favor of fleshy melodrama. Especially the awkward shouting-scene at the field, but the whole film has something contrived about it. The main-character are very illogical in their thinking, with may indicate that the film is meant to work on a allegorical level, but I'm dubious. The cinematography too strikes me as bland, with some interesting exceptions. There are faint echoes of 3-Iron here, the film that more and more stands out as his masterpiece, but lacks most of its subtle grace.Well, until the end that is. The breathtaking and magical scene where she "escapes" confirms that Kim-Duk still has it in him,(but I'm not wild about how it ties everythinkg together so neatly), as much as i respect him as an artist, i think Kim-Duk needs to relocate and form ranks.