Hidden Face (2024) Review

“Hidden Face” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kim Dae-woo
Cast: Song Seung-heon, Cho Yeo-jeong, Park Ji-Hyun, Park Ji-Young, Park Sung-Geun
Running Time: 115 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

Hidden Face marks the return of a long missing in action genre for not only Korea’s film industry, but cinema in general – the erotic thriller. While the jury is still out on if we’re currently in a new Puritan age of cinema, what can’t be denied is that sex has largely disappeared from the movies we watch in recent years, to the point that there was even a study conducted in 2019 that confirmed the same (the study concluded that in terms of depictions of sex onscreen in mainstream productions, the most comparable era we’re living is the 1960’s).

While in Hollywood eroticism in cinema peaked in the 1990’s, in Korea it was arguably the 1980’s, when the 1982 released Madame Aema (of which the recent Netflix series Aema adapted its tumultuous production) kicked off the decades wave of erotic cinema, a result of the government loosening its censorship rules of how much skin could be shown onscreen. In more recent years though you have to look to the 2010’s for a time when Korean cinema was more comfortable with showing sex onscreen, with the likes of 2012’s A Muse and 2014’s Scarlet Innocence difficult to imagine without the sexual content, the feelings of lust and desire acting as integral parts of the story.

Director and scriptwriter Kim Dae-woo has made eroticism something of a theme in his works. Having made his directorial debut with the 2006 period comedy Forbidden Quest, he’d follow it up with 2010’s The Servant, an erotically tinged adaptation of the famous romance novel Chunhyangjeon (previously adapted by the likes of Shin Sang-ok and Im Kwon-taek), and in 2013 he’d helm the Vietnam War set Obsessed. The later features Song Seung-heon (A Better Tomorrow, Fate) and Cho Yeo-jeong (My Daughter Is a Zombie, The Target) as husband and wife, with Seung-heon becoming caught up in an affair with the wife of a captain in his unit.

Hidden Face marks the first time for Dae-woo to return to the director’s chair since Obsessed, making it a welcome throwback to the type of steamy drama that’s become the signature of his work. He once more casts Seung-heon and Yeo-jeong as a couple, this time as a conductor and cellist who are due to get married in the near future. A remake of the 2011 Spanish-Colombian co-production La Cara Oculta, it’s not the first time for the original to be remade, with remakes from Bollywood, Turkey, and Mexico populating the rest of the 2010’s. For its South Korea interpretation though the plot is taken in a slightly different direction than previous adaptations, which sees Dae-woo working from a script that’s not from his own pen for the first time.

Written by Hong Eun-mi (Missing Woman, Rosebud) and Roh Deok (an established director herself, having helmed 2013’s Very Ordinary Woman and 2015’s The Exclusive: Beat the Devil’s Tattoo), the female perspective is one that gives the latest interpretation a fresh feel. The basics of the story remain the same, with the self-involved Yeo-jeong unhappy with what she perceives as Seung-heon growing distant from their relationship. To see how he reacts if they were to break up, she films a video telling him they’re over and that she’s returned to Berlin, enlisting her friend who’s also a cellist to audition as her replacement for an upcoming concert and keep an eye on him.

Both Yeo-jeong and her friend used to take cello lessons in the house Yeo-jeong and Seung-heon now live in, which comes with a secret – there’s a soundproof secret room in the middle of it, with two-way mirrors in the bedroom and bathroom that allow for anyone inside to watch the goings on beyond the glass. It’s there that Yeo-jeong has decided to camp out (for “at most 3 days”), as she plans to amuse herself by watching Seung-heon come to realise he can’t live without her. Why she goes in with her wardrobe of choice being a silky nightgown is never explained. There’s an almost inevitable comparison to Parasite thanks to the introduction of a hidden living area (not least through the shared casting of Yeo-jeong), this time behind a bookshelf rather than a kitchen pantry like in Bong Joon-ho’s classic, however here the secret area serves purely as a place of voyeurism, with Dae-woo wisely not overextending his hand.

It’s once her friend, played by Park Ji-hyun (Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, The Anchor) auditions that the plan starts to go awry. Seung-heon finds himself smitten with Ji-hyun, and after a night out drinking, they end up having sex in the bedroom, with Yeo-jeong left to watch on from the other side. Realising the key she has with her isn’t the one that opens the door of the secret room, Yeo-jeong becomes a prisoner in her own house, left to not only watch her fiancé and friend having sex with each other, but also face more practical survival issues like a lack of food.

It’s a preposterous setup, and Dae-woo seems to know it, fully leaning into the ridiculousness of the setup in order to extract the most (late night – which is when watching it comes most recommended!) entertainment value out of it. Ji-hyun puts in a particularly daring performance, bearing all in a handful of scenes, and keeping her cards close to her chest as to what exactly her end game is considering her friendship with Yeo-jeong. Her scenes with Seung-heon should be enough to get audiences pulses racing, harking back to a time when sex scenes were considered as much a part of cinema as any other part of human interaction.

Yeo-jeong for the most part is left to entertainingly unravel by herself, her self-serving demeanour reduced to using a toothbrush to rub off fungus from years old instant noodles that she finds, and helplessly scream from behind the soundproof windows at Seung-heon and Ji-hyun’s activities. Hidden Face marks the third collaboration for Yeo-jeong and Dae-woo, with the former playing the lead in 2010’s The Servant, and it’s clear they have a good understanding of each other. If anything the weak link of the trio is Seung-heon himself, who feels like he spends a large part of the runtime at the mercy of his mother-in-law to-be, played by Park Ji-young (The Roundup, The Advocate: A Missing Body).

Her character is mainly there to act as the external perspective, with Yeo-jeong’s disappearance causing increasing cause for concern, especially when it becomes clear she’s not using her credit cards and hasn’t left the country. However far from only being there as a plot device, she also gets some of the most entertainingly pointed lines, such as when she openly questions Seung-heon to if there’d be any point in them continuing to work together if Yeo-jeong is never found. Ultimately he’s left to uncover the truth himself, which leads to some welcome moments of tension and the revelation of the true relationship between Yeo-jeong and Ji-hyun, which goes back to their college days and manages to offer up some unexpected surprises.

The decision to focus on the relationship between the main trio, particularly of that between Yeo-jeong and Ji-hyun, is arguably Hidden Face’s biggest strength, offering up a conclusion that feels both deeply erotic and mildly disturbing at the same time (there’s not too many movies that share a similar final scene before the credits roll!). While hardly high art, Dae-woo has an understanding that not every movie needs to be, and here he’s created a steamy slice of voyeurism that’s never less than entertaining, making any of the less plausible moments forgivable. Plus, in an era of movies made for ambient streaming and mass consumption by every age group, it can’t be denied that, every once in a while, it’s nice to watch a movie that’s purely made for adults.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10