Three

Saam Gaang (2002), South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong

Synopsis

Three comprises three short films from three different directors of different nationalities: Memories by Jee-woon Kim (South Korea), The Wheel by Nonzee Nimibutr (Thailand) and Going Home by Peter Chan (Hong Kong), producer of the sequel The Eye. The movie is the first installment created as an international cooperation between three different Asian countries, followed two years later by the successfully acclaimed Three... Extremes. Due to the success of the later, Three is sometimes considered to be a sequel of the second movie, having even been "incorrectly" denominated as Three Extremes II.  Interestingly, each segment of both movies tends to reflect the culture of each country, its own beliefs, traditions and mysticisms.

Review

With Memories, Jee-Woon Kim demonstrates the quality that turned out to be observed a year later with the brilliantly executed A Tale of Two Sisters. The segment describes the story of a man (Bo-seok Jeong), with no recollection of the moments leading up to the sudden disappearance of his wife a few days before, and the story of an amnesic woman (Hye-su Kim), who wakes up in another part of the town, trying desperately to remember her way back home. The film is mostly a concise work, well accomplished and particularly well structured, notwithstanding the somehow predictable (but still well achieved) final twist. Competent acting, visually captivating with a beautiful camera-work and easily instilling a good sense of terror in the viewer, Memories is nonetheless slightly corrupted by an obvious (and sometimes fastidious) similarity to the film Ringu and to classic clichés of the actual Asian horror scene.

After Memories, The Wheel is somehow a clear disappointment, going far beyond from the fact that I usually tend to not particularly appreciate films where the main terror source is an evil puppet, as the present one. The segment is about an arts troupe grappling with the curse of an evil puppet that surrounds the obscure deaths of a high number of characters. Beyond the predominantly annoying poor acting during the film, The Wheel fails principally by suffocating a poor plot with exacerbated horror and dramatic elements comprising drownings, fires, asphyxiations, sudden agonizing deaths, suicides, prohibited passions, possessions and even ghosts. Tedious, The Wheel is undoubtedly the piece that does not fit in the compilation, alienating a possible smooth transition between the three short stories and becoming (after a few hilarious moments) a constant exercise of patience. The story allows however the viewer to have an interesting cultural experience of rural Thailand, introducing us to a few traditions, mysticisms and to a genre of dance drama from Thailand (Khon), being culturally the richest segment among the compilation.

“A cop searching for his missing son when he is kidnapped by a man who keeps his wife locked inside their apartment” is the premise of Going Home, which is by far the longest and clearly the most developed segment of the three stories. A grotesque love story, reaching the limits of the macabre. Clearly lacking the frightening factor and punctuated by a series of events constantly introduced in a particular slow pace, the film excels by its nature undoubtedly touching, intelligent, and with an unpredictable twist at the end for a story impeccably performed and interpreted.