No Regret: Just Another Depressing Korean Movie Dealing with Gay Issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW9NROlRYS8

From Jack, an announcement about the Korean movie NO REGRET, opening in New York and Los Angeles on July 25th: “… [t]he idea and image of homosexuality continues to be a taboo in the Asian and Asian American community. The dramatic Korean soap-opera like NO REGRET is a close depiction of men on the down-low living in suburbia and living double lives in order to assimilate and imitate the mainstream image of masculinity.”

Which lead to this e-mail thread on the 8A mailing list:

Efren: I think I remember seeing bits and pieces of this on YouTube. The boys are very cute, but it’s a fairly typical gay story from Korea (meaning: no happy ending).

Brian: What do you mean exactly by no “happy ending?”

Ernie: One dude goes blind and the other donates his eyes to him.

Nicole: They all die in a fiery cauldron of boiling hot kim chee.

Efren: Nicole, [that] sounds like a bad Korean horror movie.

Xxxtine: I’ve actually already seen this film when it played at the Reel Asian Film Festival this past November – it played to a sold out house up here. There was enough eye candy to keep me interested, but it’s rather forgettable as I don’t REALLY remember much of anything other than the sex scenes.

And while I’m all for a frank and honest discussion of the convergence of gay and Asian/Asian American issues… have you SEEN a Korean drama lately? Someone always dies. For the love of God, I watched a film about B-BOYS and two characters were horrifically wiped out the last 15 minutes of the movie. This is a movie about closeted gay men; no one is going to come out unscathed here, people.