Review: Kim Hye-mi’s ‘Climbing’
Animated Korean horror – if you’re not already sold, let me explain why you should watch out for Climbing by the Korean Academy of Film Arts graduate Kim Hye-mi. This stylised CG film sits within the phycological horror genre, exploring the well-trodden themes of mental health, obsession and the psychotic female. A film that would sit very comfortably in Kier-la Janisse analysis of female neurosis in her seminal book House of Psychotic Women. After recovering from a near-fatal car accident that claimed the life of her unborn child, the central character Se-Hyeon Choi (Kim Minji), a climber with world champion ambitions, is torn asunder by the discovery that she once is pregnant – much to the joy of her finance and soon to be mother-in-law. What manifests is an unsettling story of competitiveness, trauma and the physiological pressure women experience in regaining control over their own bodies. As pressures mount, Se-Hyeon starts receiving unprompted messages from an alternative self, through which another universe unravels in which she is not only still pregnant with her first child but has become dependent on the care of her mother-law following the accident. As both versions of her world become intertwined she must uncover which is the real Se-Huron – or, perhaps more accurately, which life is the real nightmare.
The unusual CG incorporates overtly stylised character designs, making the characters uncanny and ill-looking, disproportionate with minuscule waists and ankles and oversized heads, while the painterly-textured UV mapping makes every character look sickly and unreal. This is made even more disturbing by their environments, which alternate between a harshly lit climbing centre, resembling an underground bunker and the eerily half-lit open-plan apartment the central character shares with her partner. The alternative world, by contrast, takes place entirely in an alpine, multi-level house surrounded by lush forest that acts as a barrier to the rest of the world. As the women lose their grasp on both realities and their collective minds, a sense of claustrophia culminates.
The animation itself is a little disjointed in places, with some clearly time-saving measures used that may seem a little jarring at first, but Hye-mi has used these to her advantage. The limited movement of the peripheral characters’ hyper un-natural or even glitching animation could be read as a clever suggestion that nothing in these perceived worlds are real. As well as the artifice of animation as a whole, the use of this rudimental CG language acts as a secondary level of separation between not only the sophisticated eye of the audience but between the characters themselves, most importantly the alternative versions of the central protagonist. What results is a dizzying film that imbues the surrealist tendencies of Korean film with a gothic air, making use of the animated medium to further explore the internal space of the female. As Se-Hyeon is pulled in various directions, first by other people, then by experiences outside of her control before finally, she inevitably turns inwards to take hold of her own wants and desires to take back her physical and mental autonomy. The films make use of a slow, continuously growing sense of dread, which penetrates the audience leaving them feeling unhinged, unwell and unsure of what they are witnessing.
Climbing screens 9pm November 18th at the Genesis cinema as part of the London Korean Film Festival