Tag: subtitled

SIRAT – Review

“Sirat” is an Arabic word meaning a bridge spanning the chasm between heaven and hell, one that is thin as a thread and sharp as a sword’s edge, as we are told at the start of the movie SIRAT, an Oscar-nominated Spanish drama about a man, with his young son in tow, who is searching for his lost 20-something daughter at a rave party in the south Moroccan desert. The word Sirat is Arabic and comes from Muslim belief, but there is little heavenly in SIRAT’s world. However, there is plenty of pulsing techno/electronic music, in this searing tale of a group of people on a dangerous journey crossing the north African desert, a journey that will challenge and maybe break them.

SIRAT, set in Morocco but mostly in Spanish and French, is nominated for both the Best International Feature and Best Sound at the upcoming Academy Awards. Director Oliver Laxe co-wrote the script with Santiage Fillol, and the tender and heartbreaking tale is driven by a tense, propulsive, pulsing techno/electronic score by Kangding Ray.

An ordinary-looking Spanish man, Luis (Sergi Lopez), enters a world of hundreds of mostly young, European revelers dancing trance-like in front of a wall of amps set up in the Moroccan desert, blasting electronic and techno music continuously, along with a laser light show at night. There is a sort of outsider vibe to this large collection of people who have come to the desert to dance away the conventional world. Luis is out of place but he and his son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) are there on a mission to find his daughter who disappeared at a rave five months earlier.

Esteban looks like he is about ten and has a little white dog with him, as he and his father wander among the dancers, day and night, showing everyone at the rave a photo of the missing grown daughter. The dancers are a ragtag crowd, seeming disconnected from the world, outsiders by choice or circumstance, but they politely look at the photo before shaking their heads, to say they have not seen her.

One group of five, Steff (Stefania Gadda), Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Jade (Jade Oukid), and Bigui (Richard “Bigui” Bellamy), tells Luis there is another rave after this one, which he might also check for his daughter.

On the second day of the rave party, a caravan of Moroccan army trucks shows up, and tell the crowd that “all EU citizens need to evacuate.” The military officers do not say why, but the event suggests an impending war or conflict. The military convoy is there to escort to Europeans in their trucks, vans and RVS out of the desert.

Luis and his son, in their van, line up with the rest of the vehicles leaving the location, but suddenly the two RVs in front of them, carrying the group of five who told Luis about the other rave party, suddenly bolt out of line and take off across the desert. At Esteban’s urging, Luis impulsively follows them, and they race ahead of military vehicles in pursuit.

That snap decision sends the father and son, with this ragtag collection of friends, on a strange, harrowing trek across very rugged, desolate terrain, to an uncertain fate.

Except for renown Spanish actor Sergi Lopez, the rest of the cast are all non-actors, mostly found by the director at raves he attended. That casting choice gives the film an authenticity in this world where it is set, but they are also compelling and charismatic characters on screen. The sweeping photography of the vast desert landscape combined with the driving electronic soundtrack creates a tense sense that anything may happen as well as an air of foreboding.

We are not told why those five, Steff, Josh, Tonin, Jade and Bigui, made that break, but there are hints that there may be reasons they do not want to return to Europe. We also do not know why the Moroccan army where herding the Europeans out of the country, but we hear snippets on the radio about war, before one of the ravers shuts it off, maybe preferring not to know, although one of them suggests it is WWIII.

Those unanswered questions give the film a party at the end of the world vibe but this is not a Mad Max knock off. The story is both tender and heartbreaking, with danger around every bend.

The ravers seem to know the back roads well, suggesting they may have been in northern Africa for some time, wandering from rave party to rave party. Although Luis is wary of these strangers at first, they extend kindness to him at unexpected moments and a bond forms. They are surprisingly resourceful and self-reliant but this is a harsh environment and circumstances where anything can happen, including death.

Director Oliver Laxe effectively builds tensions as these people wander in the desert hoping to avoid the world and its conflict by running ahead of it. Harrowing things happen, and there is a sense of doom and foreboding that is amped up by Kangding Ray’s techno score, which is a perfect fit. Heartbreak and horrendous things may lay down this rock-strewn road, and when tragedy does strike, things start to spin off unanticipated directions, as this gripping drama wavers between human tenderness and terrifying chance beyond their control. Walking the thin line that that title suggests, SIRAT is unforgettable drama that is worth the heartbreak.

SIRAT, mostly in Spanish and French with English subtitles, opens in select theaters on Friday, Mar. 6, 2026.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars

“Backwoods Crime” – TV Series Review

A scene from the Austrian TV series “Backwoods Crime.” on MHz Choice. Courtesy of MHz Choice

Some time ago, I reviewed ten mostly-unrelated tele-films from Austria, streaming on MHz Choice under the umbrella of “Backwoods Crime.” The casts, plots and locales are all different, just sharing the common thread of murders in the boondocks being handled in an intelligent, modest-action manner by whichever cops are called upon. All were worthwhile, to varying degrees. Not a lemon in the lot.

“Der Schutzengel” is the first of nine now being released for streaming under that heading. This one opens 12 years before its main action, with young Martin (Michael Steinocher) having his marriage proposal deflected by his girlfriend. She says they’re too young, but doesn’t fully close that door. We learn she disappeared shortly thereafter, with her whereabouts still unknown.

A dozen years later, Martin returns to that town as a police officer, planning to move into his old house with his new squeeze. But he starts having flashbacks to the unfinished business of that dangling proposal. Those mainly consist of the eye candy we get from Martin having recorded his then-topless intended, expecting a yes to be preserved for posterity.

Martin’s first case involves the long-term housemaid of the local gentry found dead in the pond where she regularly swam. It looks like an accident, but that wouldn’t give us 90 minutes of story line, would it? Once they determine it was murder, despite any apparent motives,questions arise as to whether it relates to that earlier disappearance, which has been gnawing at Martin ever since.

The case is overseen by Detective Paul Werner (Franz Karl), who methodically and calmly unravels the mystery(ies). There’s nothing glamorous about the process, but Karl’s low-key performance, balancing the sleuthing with sensitivity, is a pleasure to watch. He’s apparently played cops before, but this character deserves more chances to shine. Give the dude a real series, folks. Then be sure to send it along for streaming on our side of the pond.

The consistency of the quality throughout these ten gives good reason to expect more of the same from the other forthcoming nine.

That’s my last review for 2025. Happy New Year, everyone!

“Backwoods Crime: Der Schutzengel,” in German with English subtitles, streams on MHz Choice starting Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

A scene from the Austrian TV series “Backwoods Crimes.” Courtesy of MHz Choice. Copyright: ORF/Mona Film/Tivoli Film/Helga Rader

“Good People” – TV Miniseries Review

A scene from the French/Belgian TV miniseries “Good People.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

“Good People” (“Des Gens Bien”) is a French/Belgian miniseries that plays out as a droll dramedy arising from a scam. The title denotes the fact that good people can do uncharacteristically bad things with what seem like good intentions. They can also rope in other good people who mean well.

We start with watching Tom (Lucas Meister) stage an auto accident in which he barely survives, though his wife, Linda (Berangere McNeese), is burned to death. We soon learn why he did it – extreme financial hardship. Then about halfway through the six episodes, we learn how. The motive is to cash in on a big life insurance policy but events, as they must, soon spin out of control.

One cop, Philippe (Michael Abiteboul), smells a rat, suspecting the accident wasn’t what it seemed. But his boss, Roger (veteran character actor Dominique Pinon), who knows Tom very well, refuses to let him investigate. Roger had lost his wife in a similar crash around that same stretch of roadway, and is completely closed to any other explanation. There’s also an obstacle of cross-border jurisdiction limiting Philippe’s efforts.

Linda and Tom owned a tanning parlor that was failing. They were on the verge of losing that, plus their home and cars, having exhausted the limits of their credit. The members of a local church kicked in a lot of money its members could little afford to help them stay afloat by updating the equipment but it wasn’t going to be enough. Thus was the plot hatched… with the best of intentions.

Among the things that go wrong, Philippe won’t give up his probing. Linda’s cousin Serge (Peter Van den Begin), a hulking thug recently paroled from prison, tumbles onto the plan and forces his way in for the payoff. Tom’s highly devout sister (Gwen Berrou), who’d convinced the churchgoers to help him and Linda, sees something she shouldn’t, and a high-profile person accidentally involved in the intrigue brings far more attention to the case than anyone could have expected.

The tenor set by the series’ trio of writers can best be described as a darkly comic, slowly unfolding farce. The cast is excellent all around, especially shining as the plan unravels and actions become more desperate. The plot includes a few surprises in what happens to whom. Van den Begin really dominates in his scenes presenting Serge’s stupidity and conscience-free brutality. Pinon, who has been such an asset as a regular in the recently-reviewed cop series “Cassandre, gets too little screen time in this one. There’s also a brief role for Corinne Masiero, who headlined one of my favorite light crime series from ANY country, “Captain Marleau.”

My frequent complaint about series that run longer than needed is mercifully NOT applicable to this one. The half-dozen 50-minute episodes befit the material. The series ends without major cliffhangers but does leave a few open questions. One source indicates they meant it to run three seasons, which may not occur, since this one aired in 2022. I’d welcome more if that happens, but am quite satisfied with where they ended this production.

“Good People” (originally “Des Gens Bien”), in French with English subtitles, begins streaming MHz Choice on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.

A scene from the French/Belgian TV miniseries “Good People.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

“Tandem: Return to the Past” – TV Series Review

Astrid Veillon and Stéphane Blanca as Soler and Marchal (center), in the French TV series “Tandem: Return to the Past.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

“Tandem: Return to the Past” (“Retour vers le passe”) is a long-running light French police procedural that draws to an end after 85 episodes that aired from 2016-2024. I reviewed the first dozen or so long ago, and don’t feel I’ve missed a lot of character progression in the interim. The squad and families have remained largely intact. Ex-spouses and colleagues Lea (Astrid Veillon) and Paul (Stephane Blancafort), the lead cops in the series, are getting along well and are possibly on the verge of re-tying the old knot. Their son Thomas (Titouan Laporte) has also become an officer. Things are going smoothly all around.

Well, that changes dramatically when a floating body turns up in the nearby river, minus one arm. Lea and Paul are vacationing with the whole family in the boonies when they find what turns out to be the missing appendage – miles from the other remains – perched atop a cairn, imbuing it with even greater significance.

They soon learn that both parts of the stiff came from a woman who was Lea and Paul’s bestie at the academy 20 years earlier. She was believed to have committed suicide. But the way her remains were unearthed and arranged, followed by the corpse of one of their old instructors found lying in her open and recently-vacated grave, point to our protagonists being targeted to revisit the old case, since someone apparently has an ax to grind, and thinks they’re the ones to handle it. Or, they might even be getting targeted, in a more menacing sense of the word.

Events in this two-part episode move along at a good pace, with humor and a few subplots fleshing out the complete picture and moving all towards closure. The scenery is lovely, as are the old buildings featured in much of the action set in Montpellier and its surroundings in southeastern France. The cast is almost overrun with likable characters. Lea and Paul’s faces – especially when smiling – radiate warmth and sincerity that works well with colleagues, witnesses and suspects.

I’m sure all who saw the previous 84 will feel as if they’re saying goodbye to old friends. I’ll probably go back and catch the ones I’ve missed. (Since writing this, I already have watched most of them; good stuff continued in the interim.)

No more coming without spoilers. Suffice it to report that all wraps up in a satisfactory manner, with no cliffhangers or unanswered questions.

“Tandem: Return to the Past” (originally “Retour vers le passe”), in French with English subtitles, begins streaming MHz Choice on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.

Stephane BLANCAFORT (Paul Marchal), and Astrid VEILLON (Lea Soler), in the French TV series “In Tandem: Return to the Past.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

RENTAL FAMILY – Review

Brendan Fraser and Akira Emoto in RENTAL FAMILY. Photo by James Lisle/Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

There is unexpected depth in RENTAL FAMILY, a comedy/drama starring Brendan Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job with an agency that supplies actors to play a part in people’s lives. There are sweet moments but nothing saccharine in this a film that thoughtfully explores issues about identity, role-playing and self-deceit as well as human connections.

Odd as it seems, such rental agencies really do exist in Japan. Brendan Fraser gives a touching performance in RENTAL FAMILY, which is partly in English and partly Japanese with subtitles, as an American actor who has been living in Tokyo for seven years but still feels like an outsider. With work becoming sparse, the out-of-work American actor takes a one-time job with a company that provides its customers with people to play roles in their lives, such as a mourner at a funeral, or even impersonate someone in their lives. The company asks him to stay one but the actor is hesitant at first. He is persuaded to take the job when the business owner points out it is still acting, like improv, and that the service is helping people.

That is not always true, as the American finds out. Some of the assignments are short-term, but others are longer. In one such case, a single mother hires the actor to impersonate the American father her young daughter never met, in order to help her gifted daughter get into an exclusive school. In another, the daughter of an older Japanese movie star, who hires the American to play a journalist who has come to interview the once-famous, aged actor, who fears he has been forgotten. The one rule in the work is not to get too involved, which Fraser’s big-hearted character struggles with that at times. This charming, beautifully-shot drama, partly in English and partly in Japanese with subtitles, is mostly sweet, warm and sometimes even comic, but it also has some surprising, and even unsettling, food-for-thought moments, as well as offering reflections on identity, human connections and role-playing in our own lives.

While there is plenty of humor, there is also a poignancy to RENTAL FAMILY, as it explores issues around role-playing in our lives and human connections, There is a sweetness to but it is naver cloying or false in tone, and always grounded in real human connections.

RENTAL FAMILY, partly in English and partly Japanese with English subtitles, opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars

SAMURAI FURY – Review

A scene from SAMURAI FURY. Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

The year is 1461 (for the movie, SAMURAI FURY, not us, though many think we’re regressing globally). Japan is in a state of chaos. The country is ravaged by plague, with 82,000 deaths, and counting; the peasants who haven’t succumbed are starving and besieged by different groups of debt collectors, using the most despicable tactics; a slew of ronin (samurai with no master to serve) are roaming the country without purpose; the Shogun ain’t doin’ diddly-squat to help anyone or stem the violence from the monks and warlords. In the midst of this, one ronin, Hasuda Hyoe (Ôizumi Yô) emerges as a good guy, who might just make a difference. That may require butting heads with his longtime friend Honekawa Doken (Shin’ichi Tsutsumi), who is in charge of forces defending the ruling class.

Hyoe picks up a spirited apprentice he calls “Frog” (Yuya Eendo) among the cringing masses and sends him off to an old sensei for a year of training. Then he gradually assembles a rag-tag army of other ronin and willing villagers to storm the capital in Kyoto. Their main goal is to destroy all the loan papers the monks holding them have been wielding to brutalize debtors and their families during this time of extreme hardship. His plans are intricate, building slowly to what will, ideally, become the Big Day.

Standard stuff, so far, as this sort of theme is quite common in East Asian martial arts and action period fare. Since it’s set in an era before guns, swords, spears, staffs and arrows are the non-anatomical weapons of the day, with occasional explosions. That calls for top-notch stunt choreography, and the film delivers superbly on that front, with relatively little wire work, thereby maximizing its grittiness.

Genre fans have seen the de rigeur training sequences in the majority of these films. Frog’s regimen for mastering the pole (the weapon, not the stripper support) is unique, and much more interesting than most, both visually and in content. The climactic battle sequences are huge in scale, bloody in execution and fascinatingly intricate. Kudos to writer/director Yu Irie for elevating the level of writing and action above the norm, and for crafting so many elaborate sets for the long course of events.  Frog’s character arc is particularly satisfying, as well as the frenemy situation that unfolds between Hyoe and Doken.

The 135-minute running time is just fine for the material presented. It seemed shorter, which is among the highest compliments I ever give.

SAMURAI FURY, in Japanese with English subtitles, is available from WellGo USA in digital format beginning Oct. 7, and in 4K and Blu-ray formats starting Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

“Petra” Season 2 – TV Series Review

A scene from the Italian TV crime series “Petra” Season 2. Courtesy of MHz Choice

It’s been three years since I reviewed the earlier episodes of the entertaining Italian procedural, “Petra.” This round not only provides a pleasant return to its picturesque Genoa setting, but gives us an engaging evolution of the eponymous star. Here’s the usual refresher link: https://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2022/11/petra-tv-series-review/

We rejoin Petra and Antonio after they’ve been on a long (by US standards) vacation. She stayed home alone with her pet tarantula – as would, of course, be her wont. He indulged in the uncharacteristic luxury of a long cruise, meeting a woman he adored (Beatrice, played by Manuela Mandracchia). But middle-aged shlub that he is, Antonio felt under-qualified to keep it going on land, since she was one of the VERY wealthy elite of the community. The class gap seemed to bother him, far more than her.

A more significant change manifests in Petra. She’s finally unpacked all those cartons from her move and filled that drab apartment with nice furnishings. Yet there’s still no artwork adorning the institutional gray walls. Baby steps towards normalcy. She’s opened up her personality appreciably, smiling and joking more than before. She’s still relationship-averse, assuming anything serious would end badly… again.

This second season has more heart, with greater emphasis on character development and personal story arcs, romantic and otherwise. Besides the spider, Petra continues another idiosyncrasy that fans of our “Quincy” series will recognize – keeping a memento from the clues at the end of each solved case.

But now to address the main course – the murders to be solved. As before, each 90-minute episode addresses new crimes, so bingeing isn’t as important for following the proceedings. In the first, a guy she meets from the web for a “zipless… shall we say, boink” turns up the next day as the season’s first murder victim. She keeps that one-nighter a secret for a while, so she’ll be allowed to stay on the case. It turns out that he was married with two kids and a complex set of personal and business activities, leaving a whole lotta motives and possible murderers to sort through. The second episode begins with a homeless guy in an alley being killed by a bullet, then brutally kicked by skinheads. Are those loathsome louts the culprits? Or was there more in the man’s pre-destitution life that caused his demise, along with others that followed?

The third episode begins with the murder of a dude in a jester costume during the colorful festivities of Carnival. Since everyone frolicking in the crowded street was in costume, ID’ing the killer wasn’t helped much by footage from surrounding street cams. The solution had to be extracted from old business with old friends/frenemies as well as recent events. The last episode revolved around sex trafficking and prostitution – mainly affecting the lives of minors.

Though there are moments of levity along the way, these are all handled as dramas, without the comedy side of other Italian favorites like “Detective Montalbano,” “Makari” or “Monterossi.” Three of the four cases were harder to figure out than one. It would be interesting to know which episode any of you find to be the weakest mystery link in the chain. Perhaps your mileage will vary.

What I’d previously described as a miniseries turned out to be two four-episode seasons that end in a satisfactory place for most of the principals (i.e. no cliffhangers), but leaves the door open for a third season. Since this quartet aired abroad in 2023, which was three years after the first foursome, it’s quite possible that more will follow. Fine with me if that’s the way the renewal winds blow.

“Petra” Season Two, mostly in Italian with English subtitles, begins streaming on MHz Choice starting Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

THE VILLAGERS – Review

A scene from THE VILLAGERS. Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

I’ve enjoyed a slew of Ma Dong-seok’s contributions to Korean action flicks. The rotund, open-faced actor usually plays sidekicks and minor parties – often adding some comic relief. Most of his 14 awards and nominations, to date, have been for supporting actor gigs. But in THE VILLAGERS, he’s the action star.

His character, Yeok Gi-cheol, is a former MMA champion who had aged into coaching. His integrity gets him banished when he confronts the sport’s honchos about their corruption. Fortunately – or so it first seems – an admirer gets him a job in the village giving rise to the film’s name, teaching phys ed and serving as assistant dean at a high school.

The latter title merely sticks him with the thankless task of collecting overdue tuition from the students and their families. Because he looks like an overweight, middle-aged simpleton, he gets less respect than Rodney Dangerfield. The main drama comes from the ignored efforts of a student, Yoo-jin (Kim Sae-ron) to get the school and cops to investigate the disappearance of her best friend. Despite being only 15, the missing girl had been working at a night club that catered to very adult tastes, raising many possible crime-free explanations about her fate. Yoo-jin insists that her pal was not the sort of unhappy teen who runs away that the authorities want to presume. Deaf ears on lazy cops’ heads abound.

Since all her efforts have been rebuffed by every adult in the picture, Yoo-jin is skeptical about Gi-cheol’s attempts to help her. It becomes apparent to us long before them that there’s something big going on, with cops, politicos and school honchos in on whatever it is. His default setting is that of being baffled by how little anyone in any position of responsibility cares what happened to her – especially the cops’ reluctance to even open a file for investigation.

This sort of little guy(s) vs. systemic corruption is a common theme in films from all around the world. Bollywood cranks out tons of these with high-octane, one-man-army vigor. Usually, the action quotient is higher than in this one, which plays out more like a slowly unfolding procedural. Gi-cheol could and should be delivering more beat-downs than he does, spreading his frustrations to the viewers.

The conspiracy is a spider web that takes a long time to penetrate. But the two stars keep it interesting, even as daylight starts peeking through the fog of criminal enterprise and cover-up later than viewers might prefer. Even so, the climax makes the journey worthwhile.

There’s a sad note in all of this. Kim Sae-ron was a charming, talented actress with a dozen awards and nominations on her resume, including one of my favorite Korean imports, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE. But she committed suicide a few years after this film’s release when she was only 24. A real loss for all.

THE VILLAGERS, in Korean with English subtitles, is available streaming in digital format from WellGo USA starting Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars

“Riviere-Perdue” Season 1 – TV series review

A scene from French TV crime series “Riviere-Perdue.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

The six-episode police procedural miniseries from France, “Riviere-Perdue,” covers a related series of crimes in six 52-minute episodes. Its tone is more somber than most of the European TV fare I’ve reviewed – almost Nordic in tenor. But the setting is a village nestled in lush mountain greenery that makes it a visual treat, including all the standard driving transition scenes with overhead shots well above average on the beauty scale.

The star is Captain Alix Berg (Barbara Cabrita) who specializes in juvenile cases. She and an older homicide colleague, Commissaire Balthus (Jean-Michel Tinivelli), come to the eponymous town because two 11-year-old girls, Anna (Charlotte Lacoste) and Lucie (Camille Petit), went missing five years earlier, but staunch public pressure to find them endures. Their parents aren’t wealthy, and no ransoms were demanded, making some sort of perversion or trafficking most likely.

Ferrer (Nicolas Gob), the local lead cop, is still kicking himself for not realizing there had been a crime from the get-go, possibly making the recovery harder than it became. There’s a lot of anger and suspicion among the two families and others who may have been involved. The whole town is up in arms about the lack of resolution. The upside for viewers is that quite a few cast members get to display a wide range of their dramatic chops.

Some new evidence leads to the suspicion that an abduction from seven years before this one might have been done by the same perp or perps. Anna is rescued by a trucker in the early going but says little about her five years in captivity, including how much of the time she was with Lucie. Some of that may be due to emotional trauma and a head injury, but she also seems more secretive that she should be – especially since Lucie’s whereabouts remain unknown. Most of the running time centers around the search for Lucie, as the three detectives ricochet among a number of suspects, pursuing each clue that pops up regarding the old and new cases.

MHz Choice subscribers may recognize Gob from the light mystery series “The Art of Crime,” and Bruno Debrandt from the episodic procedural drama “The Traveller.” I’ve enjoyed both series, as my reviews of them reflect. This one is more serious and mystifying than those others. That’s partly due to the nature of the crimes running through the season, and all the dicey reactions and shifting relations among the principals that ebb and flow at a high and often extreme rate. As usual, there’s no nudity and relatively little on-screen violence. Beyond that, the less you know of the details, the more you’ll savor the suspense and its handful of plot twists.

“Riviere-Perdue” Season 1, mostly in French with English subtitles, is available via on MHz Choice starting Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars

Barbara CABRITA (as Alix Berg) Nicolas GOB (as Victor Ferrer) Cyril GUEI (as Marc Vidal), in a scene from the French TV series “Riviere-Perdue.” Courtesy of MHz Choice

HIDDEN FACE – Review

A scene from the Korean steamy suspense drama HIDDEN FACE. Courtesy of Well Go USA

The subtitled Korean export HIDDEN FACE is marketed as a suspense tale, but it’s a just-shy-of-soft-core drama about a romantic triangle that takes a few bizarre turns among a very attractive cast. Song Seung-heon plays the new conductor of a prestigious symphony orchestra, who landed his plum gig largely because he married the rich-bitch daughter (Cho Yeo-jeong) of a strutting soap opera star (Park Ji-young, looking alarmingly like Eddie Izzard in drag mode) who fancies herself the star of every scenario, on or off-camera… and convinces others to bend to her will. She provides the elegant apartment in which the newlyweds reside, as well as being the orchestra’s main benefactor. Mega-clout all around, wielded shamelessly by a mega-Karen.

The wife’s bestie and fellow cellist (Park Ji-hyun) have a chat in which the former pouts that she’s not getting enough attention from her stony-faced hubby and decides to disappear, leaving an unlikely suicide note behind. That opens up two spots for the bestie – a chair in the orchestra, and a horizontal one in the marital bed. With that almost Hitchcockian setup, we initially wonder how she vanished – is she dead, or just testing how much people will miss the preening Princess? Then the plot veers sharply into DePalma territory once we learn where she went and how she got there. The steamy bits come from several trysts with surprisingly generous displays of nudity for an East Asian production. Those scenes are beautifully staged and scored, both artistically and erotically.

The reveals are rather over-the-top, but the female performances and gorgeous sets are so compelling that one may not care about the logic or logistics of it all; or the fact that the male lead is a virtually blank slate, readily manipulated by the latest woman to pull his chain (or other appendage). The script is adapted from a 2011 Spanish film, THE HIDDEN FACE, which I haven’t seen. But some descriptions indicate it’s even more lurid. Time to start looking for that guilty pleasure, too.

Regular readers know how many Korean action flicks I’ve praised in the past few years. This tossed salad of psychological issues and titillation makes me think I should expand my genre repertoire.

HIDDEN FACE, in Korean with English subtitles, debuts on digital formats from Well Go USA as of Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars