[critical] Thirst – This Is My Blood

Sang-hyun is a young priest, Korean, loved and respected. Against the advice of his superiors, he volunteered to test in Africa of an experimental vaccine against a new deadly virus. Like other guinea pigs, it succumbs to the disease, but a blood transfusion of unknown origin brings him back to life. Back in Korea, he begins to undergo strange mutations, physical and psychological : the priest becomes a vampire. But the news of his miraculous healing attracts of the sick pilgrims who hope to benefit from his grace. Among them, Sang-hyun finds a childhood friend who lives with his mother and his wife, Tae-Ju. He succumbs to the violent attraction carnal he feels for the young woman…

Author’s Note

[rating:8/10]

• Release Date : September 30, 2009

• Directed by Park Chan-Wook

• Film south Korean

• With Song Kang-Ho, Kim Ok-vin, Kim Hae-Sook

• Duration : 2h 13min

• Trailer :

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When the director of Old Boy and Lady Vengeance gives birth to a project dealing with the vampirism slowly developed for years, it makes you Thirst, a human drama of rare intensity we are bringing in a maze at once poetic and violent.

Thirst” takes us on the traces of Blood-Today, a priest who, to help science to find a vaccine against a virus that wreaks havoc, decides to volunteer to be injected with the vaccine then the virus. Terrible mistake on the part of this devoted servant of God who from one day to the next will switch to the other side of the border between good and evil by becoming a vampire. His blood lust and his sexual desires will soon prevail on his religious beliefs. Will follow a long and painful descent to the underworld that it will not do, unfortunately, not the only one…

With a perfect staging, a band original lyric, inspired by Bach and a play of light that has never been equaled (Park Chan-wook excels in the way to impose an atmosphere without any concession), Thirst is first and foremost a film about difference and, more particularly, on the acceptance of the latter. The vampirism here introduced, even if it is of exceptional accuracy and very far away from this fad created by Twilight, serves as a thread to a psychology of a rare intensity : each character will react differently in the face of this differentiation that the key overnight. The (re)discovery, both carnal and spiritual, of these two beings in perdition, something, haunting, and extremely poetic. Everyone plays their role brilliantly even if the younger Kim Ok-Vin stands out of the lot in this role is paradoxical exuding both innocence and perversity, love and hate.

In the end, Thirst is a breath of fresh air from south Korea. Moving, cruel and sometimes very funny, the film confronts us with a film that continues to gain in insurance for a few years and that pays for the luxury of styling the post our neighbours across the Atlantic with one of the vampire stories the most magnetic of the moment. We can only regret that most bitterly some small lengths leading to an atmosphere that didn’t need to. Nevertheless, one can only remain speechless in front of a show such mastery. Park Chan-wook definitely deserves its award of the jury of the Cannes film Festival of 2009. Hats off to them.