Director flips Korean gender roles with ‘Secrets, Objects’1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteYoung-mi Lee is a South Korean filmmaker who likes to expose secrets. Her movies plumb deep into her characters’ psyches, revealing confidential lives and repressed desires.
Her 10 short films have been populated by the likes of a cab driver who realizes she’s a lesbian; a composer with a closeted sexual drive; and two roommates – one Japanese, one Korean – whose sublimated racism is exposed in a battle over a man.
“I like to focus on a person who doesn’t look very special and dig deep into their life,” she said. “And every single time, this otherwise very normal character is harboring a huge secret.”
Now, in her first feature-length movie, “Secrets, Objects,” the 45-year-old London-trained director is taking on her most controversial subject yet: the voracious, hidden sexual appetite of a supposedly happily married, middle-aged woman in Seoul.
