VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS

The title of this slyly-comic feature dervies from a landmark work of dadaist wire sculpture by Marcel DuChamp, while the film's structure brilliantly reinvents the romantic triangle in cubist terms. Twice, from differing points of view and alternating points in time, we see attempts by two different men to seduce Soo-Jung, a writer at a small South Korean TV production company. One furtive suitor is her married producer; the other, evidently more brazen, is an affluent art gallery owner. Both would seem to be sophisticated, worldly gents, but beneath their wooing lies one of the most primal of male desires – to deflower a virgin, which Soo-Jung is. Hong Sang-Soo is Korean cinema's reigning poet-laureate of the ins, outs and self-deceptions of contemporary relationships, not to mention the tricks and traps of screen storytelling. VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS is his funny valentine to modern mating rituals, beginning on the day that 24-year-old Soo Jung is steeling herself to finally surrender her virtue, and time-tripping backwards and forwards through the proceedings. (In Korean with English subtitles)