In our modern time, a College art instructor named Su-Hyeon lives an ordinary and happy life with his girl friend Seon-Young, who is a professional surgeon. One day, this ordinary life change to a more supernatural adventure when Su-Hyeon begins to have some visions and dreams of a beautiful woman from the old century. One night, wondering in confusion and thinking about the woman of his dreams, Su-Hyeon finds in an open air market, an antique wood gingko bed that is anything but ordinary. Not so long after he got his new acquisition in his apartment, he gets the unexpected visit of two spirits. The first one is Midan, the women he see in his dream, she has come to warn him that his life his in endangered by general Hwang, the second spirit.
Su-Hyeon will learn that he is in fact the reincarnation of the lost love of Princess Midan. Midan wanted desperately to see her lost lover again but her efforts awakens the evil spirit of general Hwang, who wants to do everything he can to keep these two lovers apart for all of eternity. While trying to discover more about Milan, the Gingko bed and his pass life has a court musician, Su-Hyeon will have to convince his current girlfriend that he's being chased by an evil spirit and also that he's the reincarnated loved one of a Princess from the old time.
I'm not sure what "Gingko Bed" is exactly, is it a horror, a romantic, a thriller or a fantasy movie? Or maybe all these genres melted in one package. Because there are so many different elements in the movie that make it really hard to categorize. But don't get me wrong, I don't consider mixing different genres a bad thing; on the contrary I love this idea. At first sight, it might look as a easy going movie with some similarities with the movie "Terminator:" An evil bad guy appears from nowhere, he wants to kill you, you now have to flee, bad guy kills innocent people, blah blah blah… But at least the similarities stop there and the whole thing turns into something that you didn't expect. Mixing some fantasy elements dealing with eternal love and using a romantic story which tries to get you hooked to the characters, all this is packed with a lot of very messy sub-plots, making "Gingko Bed" a good movie, but maybe not the classic movie it could have been.
The real problem with the movie is the story itself. I prefer to warn you because you probably won't understand a thing of the movie during the first 45 minutes. Of course most of the questions are answered after that but even at the end of the viewing, there's still that feeling of incomprehension inside of your head; probably because there are too many things going on during the development of the story. I really think that the filmmakers should have concentrated more on the story of Su-Hyeon and leave the subplot of the professional problem his girl friend have at the hospital. I don't mind having some obscure and intriguing plots at the beginning of the movie and not really knowing what is going on, but it was stretched a little too long. And with all these sub plots, it was too much overwhelming for the spectator, who instead of trying to understand the motivations of the characters, spends too much time wondering and trying to find answers to his multiple questions about the main idea of the movie.
That confusing plot didn't help the characters. Even if the acting was excellent and that the serious melodrama scenes were very convincing, I had some big problems to really understand the feeling of the characters. Especially the main character Su-Hyeon, played by Suk-kyu Han, one of the most popular actors in South-Korea right now. The girl in his vision appears to him one time and he suddenly falls in love with her, almost forgetting his current girlfriend. He didn't show any real struggle about this twisted love triangle and even his girlfriend seemed indifferent to it. Maybe it was just me, but the love story didn't work for me unfortunately.
In the melodrama department, the last scene was well executed but I was expecting a big turn over or twist, something that would make me feel sad about these characters, but what I planned for them actually happened, which leaves me very indifferent to the big finale. In general, I didn't find the characters as good as the level of acting in the movie. The only real character that really stuck out was, in my opinion of course, the bad guy played by Hyun-joon Shin, well known now for his role as the main character of "Bichunmoo." The character design was very cool, he really looked mean and his facial expressions were just perfect for the role of a bad guy. Maybe if the story would have been less complicated it would have given a chance for all the characters to have a stronger meaning in the movie, because they ended up like an ordinary element of the movie and nothing more.
Since the movie mixed a lot of different genres, it gives the movie a special touch that not every movie can praise to have. Fist, there are some bloody moments well spread during the movie. At first sight, the movie doesn't give any real indication that there will be a couple of gory scenes so I was very surprised when it happened on screen. That explains the 18 rating on the box of the DVD. Don't expect a gore fest of course, but I prefer to mention it if someone with a fragile stomach would like to watch this movie. There are some pretty convincing bloody violent moments in the movie, which I know will please to some of you.
There's also a lot of fantasy moment dealing with spirits and ghosts. Since it's not a very recent production, don't expect to see flawless special effects. They are not to the point of looking cheesy but you can still spot easily the imperfection on screen. If you keep an open mind, I don't think that you will have any problem believing the special effects. As for me I never thought at any moment that the movie looked really cheesy and I'm sure that the filmmakers took special care to only do what they could make it look good and believable on screen. The only real problem with the spirit element was that they didn't give enough information to really understand their concept of ghosts, reincarnation and possession. It seemed that their original main idea changed from time to time during the movie so even at the end of the viewing I still had a lot of unanswered questions about this aspect.
"Gingko Bed" is considered by many to be the first South Korean movie that has put the Korean industry on the map of International cinema, a couple of years ago. "Gingko Bed" was directed by Je-gyu Kang, who also directed the International success "Swiri," he really succeeded at giving a very serious and interesting look to the movie. As for the musical score which was also very impressive and powerful, it was composed by Dong Jun Lee who also worked on "Swiri" and "Soul Guardians". In all, "Gingko Bed" has a lot of technical quality but even if it suffers from a too much confusing plot and misunderstanding characters, it worth the watch and I'm sure those fans of fantasy movie will enjoy it.
At last a decent release, you can now forget the bad Hong Kong Taiseng version which was full screen and also in Chinese language only. The Bitwin release has a decent anamorphic widescreen transfer which was sometime very grainy, maybe because it's not a very recent production. For the sound you the original Korean audio track only in Dolby Digital 2.0 unfortunately, too bad because the music in a 5.1 mode would have really enhanced the viewing experience. The English subtitles of excellent quality, as for the extras it consist only of cast and crew info in Korean, chapter selection, picture gallery and a trailer. Since it's the best version available right now, I can't recommend it enough to get the Korean version. (Also don't worry about the picture at the back of the DVD cover, it's is not a spoiler but I still think that it was a bad idea to have used this picture).