“Hopeless”: a brilliant first Korean film under the auspices of Martin Scorsese

Yeon-gyoo, a young South Korean just out of adolescence, still lives in the small, sordid apartment where his mother, his new partner, and Ha-yan, his daughter, also live. He leads a dull life, regularly beaten up by his alcoholic stepfather, while his mother does not intervene, not brilliant at school and without hope of getting out of his provincial hole, even if he dreams of going to a day in the Netherlands.

His problems worsen the day he seriously injures a high school student who attacked Ha-yan. However, after being excluded from his school, a stranger suddenly reaches out to him: Chi-geon, the leader of a gang of small-time raiders, who extort the local merchants, and are under the orders of a godfather of the local underworld. Although endowed with a certain sense of honor, Yeon-gyoo agrees to play dumb for the gang of thugs…

The first film by a young director from the land of Morning Calm, Kim Chang-hoon, “Hopeless”, Sans Espoir in French, had its world premiere in the prestigious “Un Certain Regard” section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. features in its credits two local celebrities, Song Joong-ki and Kim Hyung-seo. The first is a renowned film and series actor, also a South Korean TV host who, seduced by the script, gave up all fees to star in the film. The second is better known by her pseudonym Bibi, K-pop star.

The two agreed to break their smooth image to venture into this noir feature film, which is somewhat reminiscent of the legendary “Goodfellas”, by Martin Scorsese (1990). The casting and the means are certainly not comparable, but the basic idea remains the same: how an individual who already feels condemned when he has barely left childhood will fall on the wrong side of life, and what price he is willing to pay to get out of it.

Kim Chang-hoon can also be reminiscent of Scorsese when he films the contained anger of his protagonists, the sudden outbreak of violence, which can go very far, the weight of traditions, which punctuate this initiatory journey filmed on edge. . For a first try, a masterstroke!