The Sitges Festival experienced a day of contrasts yesterday. Audiences went from violent Project Wolf Hunting to romantic Emily without even having ten minutes to switch gears. Both films compete in the official section. Project Wolf Hunting is the applauded proposal of the Korean Kim Hong-Sun, who has used nothing more and nothing less than 2.5 tons of blood during the 121 minutes of footage.
Korea and the Philippines reach an agreement to exchange their respective prisoners. The Philippine government sends a first shipment by plane to Korea, but one of the victims is waiting at the airport and causes a massacre. So that the disaster does not repeat itself, the second trip is made by a boat. As expected, a very violent inmate has managed to get some of his comrades into the merchant with a whole arsenal. His cronies free him and the dead are served.
As if that were not enough, a man also travels secretly on the ship, a kind of zombie to whom actor Choi Guyhwa gives the little life he has left, who has been subjected to genetic experiments until he has become an invincible killing machine. Inmates, crew, and cops go down throughout the film in the bloodiest ways imaginable.
The transfer of dangerous prisoners has always been the meat of a movie script and the start of Project Wolf Hunting is reminiscent of Con Air (Simon West, 1997). Kim Hong-Sun liked West's film, but he assures that it has not served as a reference for him, "my most admired film in Western filmography is Amores perro (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)", the Korean director points out in a conversation with The Vanguard.
The violence of Amores Perros is less bloody than that of Project Wolf Hunting, but Kim Hong-Sun, who is passing through Sitges for the first time and has already been "enjoying the festival like never before" for three days, does not give too much importance to those 2.5 tons of blood: "for some viewers it will be a lot and for others little, the important thing is to convey the idea that extreme violence generates more violence and the only way to avoid it is for people to know it," he says.
Emily is the other side of the coin. The actress Frances O'Connor signs the script for this film, the first she has directed, which moves between the gothic and the romantic. Young Emily Brontë lives with her father and her Branwell siblings, Charlotte and Anne. Shy and reserved, Emily, who feels nailed by the absence of her deceased mother, suffers from clashes with Charlotte and enjoys the company of the crazy and hard-drinking Branwell.
All the brothers have a wild imagination and a literary vocation, but Emily limits herself to writing poems and does not launch into the novel until she lives a passionate and unhappy love affair with the new local priest who is also her French teacher. . Emma Mackey's performance as young Emily has caught the attention of the public and perhaps also that of the jury that will announce the awards for this Sitges Festival on Saturday, which include one for the best female performance.
