One of the crazier features to emerge from the 1960s is Jeong Jin-woo’s The Student Boarder, a kitschy, overblown melodrama about a jilted lover fixated on revenge. The ever-popular Shin Sung-il plays Min-gu, a sarcastic accordion player who moves into a boarding house across the street from his former lover. The object of his vengeance, played by Kim Ji-mi, is a former Miss Korea pageant winner who abandoned her fiancé and married the chairman of a business conglomerate. When one day she hears an accordion across the street playing “The Student Boarder”, a song frequently performed by her old lover, she realizes that the new life she has built for herself is about to shatter into pieces.
Never one to exercise much restraint, director Jeong Jin-woo gives us a full-throated tale of love and revenge in gorgeous, gaudy black-and-white imagery. The melodramatic excesses of our lead couple, from Shun Sung-il’s sneering, monotonous tone of voice to Kim Ji-mi’s weeping theatrics, is nicely balanced by an interesting collection of minor characters whose ambitions echo that of our hero. Actress Jeon Kye-hyun stands out in particular for her portrayal of a woman who seeks her husband’s murderer at night, passing out from drink when she fails to find anything. Meanwhile cinematographer Yu Jae-hyung infuses the film with inventive energy, his camera peering from behind flower arrangements and rushing forward into oncoming cars.
In the sixties, The Student Boarder was invited to screen in a section of the Venice Film Festival. The film must surely have made an impression on those who saw it, but 35 years later it is only vaguely recollected in Korea and unknown abroad. Though no model of refinement, Jeong Jin-woo’s cinema is charged with energy and creativity, and it is likely to resonate in new and interesting ways with contemporary audiences.
Darcy Paquet