The less you know about Burning is probably the better. The film is based on a Haruki Murakami short story, and the adaptation from Lee Chang-dong goes from a complicated love triangle to a boilerplate mystery with stunning severity. Yoo An-in plays Jong-su, a prospective writer living in South Korea near the DMZ. He runs into Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a former childhood neighbor who has turned into a curious beauty. When Hae-mi travels to Africa, she asks Jong-su to watch her cat while she’s gone. Hae-mi returns having made a friend named Ben (Steven Yeun), a charming, stylish man of affluent means and little explanation as to how he accumulated his wealth. Jong-su is weary of Ben’s casual, friendly nature, the effortless way he insinuates himself into their lives. When Hae-mi goes missing, Jong-su becomes even more concerned.

Burning is not a film breathlessly concerned about the suspense of its plot, but more consumed by its atmosphere. Lee (who wrote the script with Oh Jung-mi) fills every sequence with an ethereal dread, a lonely desperation that seeps from its characters into the scenery. As the mercurial Ben, Steven Yeun comes in and out of the story bringing more questions with each appearance. I found myself weary at times by Burning‘s aggressive mellowness, it’s trade of excitement for aesthetic. Perhaps it would have been better to have a familiarity Lee, a internationally-renowned filmmaker whose films I had not seen before this. Or perhaps the film could have used more Jeon and Yuen, whose characters spend large amounts of time off screen. It’s perhaps not great that the best characters are the ones you know the least about.

Part of the fun in Burning is trying to decide what kind of film it actually is. Class war comedy? Bone-chilling thriller? Coming-of-age journey? I found myself too tired to project upon it what I would have liked it to be, even while still being astonished by the simplicity with which Lee crafts certain visual sequences. The film is quite a curio, a story that invites you to enter before shutting the door in your face.

 

Directed by Lee Chang-dong