Pollen

A rich industrialist named Hyun-ma owns a huge traditional Korean house on the outskirts of Seoul, where his mistress lives together with her younger sister Mi-ran. One day, Hyun-ma brings to the house a young man named Dan-ju, who serves as his secretary and also his occasional lover. The day turns out to be a chaotic one, with Mi-ran (played by the 21-year-old actress Yun So-ra) experiencing her first menstrual cycle and, mortified, running out of the house. Dan-ju chases after her, but as the young man and woman get to know each other, feelings develop between them. This will prove to be the spark that sets off Hyun-ma’s jealous rage and turns the house into a hotbed of sexual tension.
Pollen, based on a 1939 novel by Lee Hyo-seok, is the first film directed by Ha Kil-chong after returning from the US with a degree from UCLA Film School. As someone with keen political consciousness and a strong interest in cutting edge cinema, Ha sought to bring something new to the Korean film industry, even though he was well aware of the censorship hurdles involved. In the end, even with his creative freedom severely restricted, Pollen caused a scandal upon its release, particularly for the grotesque nature of its presentation. Inspired by the early works of the New Hollywood movement, Ha set aside the conventions of established film grammar in search of a new aesthetic. It proved to be somewhat ahead of its time, with most critics feeling alienated by it.
Much has been made of the fact that the residence in this film is referred to as “the blue house” (pureun-jip). This bears an unmistakable resemblance to the name of the president’s residence in postwar Korea (Cheongwadae, literally “house with blue roof tiles” and referred to in English as the Blue House). It’s tempting to think of the character of Hyun-ma, with his rapacious greed and cruelty, as a straight allegory of the military dictatorship, but Pollen proves to be more complex than this simple reading. Ha is more interested in examining power and authority — and our failure to resist it — on an abstract level.
Pollen is often compared to Pasolini’s Teorema (1968) for its similar portrayal of a household where tensions and repressed desires are unleashed by a visitor from the outside. But this is a work with a very different agenda. Growing progressively darker in its later reels, the film can be read as an attempt to depict the true, ugly face of authoritarianism, while at the same time giving us a candid glimpse into our inner selves. This is ambitious filmmaking, and even though the results are sometimes uneven, it stands as one of the high points of 1970s Korean cinema.