An Experience to Die For

Director: Kim Ki-young

1995 / 95min / DCP

The final completed film by Kim, one of the foremost directors of South Korea’s golden age, which reunited him with his Insect Woman (1971) and Woman of Fire (1972) star Youn Yuh-jung (winner of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Minari), An Experience to Die For is a gender-flipped take on Patricia Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train and its 1951 adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock. Two women, Youn and Lee Tam-mi, make a deal to bump off one another’s spouses, who are guilty of neglect and infidelity. A bitter and bleak last chapter to one of the greatest filmographies in Korean cinema, in which even the laudable quality of sisterly solidarity is put to predatory purposes.

Part of Kim Ki-young x 2