Asako in Ruby Shoes is a film by Lee Jeyong prior to his more popular period Chosen retooling of Les liaisons dangereuses. While I find this film to be uneven and it certainly starts off quite rough, there are some charms to it's stories about urban loneliness that just barely won me over in the end.
This film features two separate stories that are interrelated by themes and connections, but the characters hardly really cross. The film starts with Uin, a government clerk in Seoul, who lives a rather lonely and bored life. He's also seemingly socially awkward and seeks (sexual) solace by viewing near-naughty pics on the internet. He also becomes attracted to a flippant and dismissive scarlet-dye-haired worker in his building. The second story follows Aya, a student in Tokyo, who is so lost that she develops an obsession with committing suicide by holding her breath. She also develops a fixation on the titular ruby shoes and picks up a couple extra jobs, including as an "actress" for a rather tame internet site catering to lonely men.
Direction-wise, the film starts fairly rough. Some of the editing and framing choices are jagged, however, as the film progresses, these problems become less noticeable and a considerably appreciable art-house type style, somewhat reminiscent of French New Wave films emerges. The story itself is also fairly interesting, although I had a hard time sympathizing with Uin, due to his often creepy obsessive tendencies. Sometimes the "crossings" between the two characters become a little contrived, especially as the film goes on, but the emotional stories of the two characters (especially Aya) becomes so much more enthralling that, while still thrown by it, I found myself appreciating the film all the same. The film also has several moments of humor, ranging from a few gags to the kind of awkward humor that makes me want to hide behind my couch, but I wouldn't really call this a comedy.
Technically, the film is still a bit rough, but some of my critique might reflect the fact that the DVD transfer I have was quite wretched. Color is off and oversaturated and at times undersaturated and it looks like the DVD transfer was taken off of a video master, giving it some rather ugly noise and interlacing issues. To add injury to insult, the film's original ratio was dropped for a 4:3 pan and scan for this Hong Kong edition that I received. Consequently, I found it hard to judge the film's production values. In terms of craft, the actors do a remarkable job and while some of the supporting characters definitely ventured into caricatures, the leads held their roles well, considering that the themes they had to embody were rather subtle.
I have to say that while it was tough going at first, I found myself actually enjoying Asako in Ruby Shoes. Unfortunately, being unable to connect with Uin on top of the contrivances, combined with a rather dismal DVD transfer, blunted my enjoyment quite a bit. Still, I think that there's enough going on in this film to merit a viewing, for interested parties. It's rough, but I like it okay. 6/10.
