About This Film
Winner of the Best Film award at the 1967 Blue Dragon, “Flame in the Valley” is a quintessential anti-war movie, and one of the best titles of the Korean Classic Film Archive. A real masterpiece, the film has it all: comedy, drama, social commentary, anti-war messages, great characters and great performances, in a package that manages to be equally entertaining and meaningful.
Synopsis
Kim Soo-yong takes the myth of Lysistrata and adapts it to a Korean setting. In a village inhabited by war widows in Jirisan Mountains during the Korean War (early 50s), the two main protagonists Jeom-rye (Ju Jeung-ryu) and Sa-wol (Do Kum-bong) live across each other. Jeom-rye stumbles upon a communist soldier, Gyoo-bok (Shin Young-kyun), who is hiding in the area and proceeds on beginning a sexual relationship with him. Sa-wol eventually finds out and blackmails both lovers, the soldier to have sex with her and her “adversary” to continue keeping his existence a secret. The two women form a rather peculiar truce as they use Gyoo-bok as a sexual tool, but their arrangement does not hold for long, as South troops reach the area, and violence ensues.
