"Nabi" Review (2001)

"Nabi" means butterfly in Korean. The film is definitely very Korean with its pathos and pervasive sense of doom and gloom.
It is also a very experimental film shot in DV giving it a rather rough look.
The look suits the film fine as it is a curious sci-fi about the near future, where an unnamed Korean city has acid rains falling constantly. Among this backdrop, tourists from the world flock over to get infected with the Millenium virus. This virus erases people's painful memories.
Anna (Kim Ho-Jung) is a German Korean who had a painful miscarriage and wants to earase this memory and comes to the city seeking the disease. The tour guide Yuki (Kang Hye-Jeong) is pregnant and also has lots of pains in her life. The third character is the taxi driver K (Jang Hyeong-Seong) who is in search of his birth parents throughout the city. This joins the three characters together and they begin to bond and discover some happiness among all the dreariness going on.
Director Moon Seung-Wook studied in Poland with Polish auteurs and this film evidently shows much of Polish Cinema's influences. However, its pathos, doom and gloom are definitely Korean. Does Anna get to catch the disease and take the easy way out or does she learn her lesson and choses to face life? The anwer is not as easy as it seems as there is some plot twist near the end.
It is exciting to see a rather original film. It is not a masterpiece but this film does make one think about the mysteries of humanity.
Not Rated with some nudity and language
Aspect Ratio 1.85
Korean