An oddball little item from Korea's youngest female helmer, 23-year- old Lee Suh-goon, Rub Lovein its best moments is like an East Asian anime movie made by David Lynch. Blackly comic tale of a professional hit woman who loses her memory shows a raw talent at work that could win a following in latenight festival slots. Nana (Lee Ji-eun) is a baby-faced assassin who plans a trip to China but is distracted by an American, Guy (Joshua Klausner), who hires her to kill him. Before his death, he gives her an amnesia-inducing drug, and, forgetting her past, she goes on vacation with a manga illustrator, Cho Han (An Jae-uk), who's madly in love with her (hence the title) and makes her a character in his latest manga.
Film was produced by the company of Park Chul-soo (301 302, Push! Push!), with whom Lee has worked as a writer, and there are traces in Rub Loveof that director's outre tastes. Lee's visual palette is, however,all her own, with deep blacks and maroons, a mixture of manga imagery and reality, and special effects (including "squeezed" anamorphic visuals) that add up to a weird take on genre material.
Derek Elley