KILLING ROMANCE. A satire of everything [REVIEW]

Yeo-rae (played by Lee Hanne) is a leading star of Korean cinema. The actress churns out hit after hit, endorses unhealthy products, earns millions, and enjoys a glowing media image—until her luck runs out. Her “five minutes of fame” come to an abrupt end following her role in a sci-fi blockbuster. The film becomes the laughingstock of Korean cinephiles, and Yeo-rae’s popularity plummets. To wait out the bad publicity, she retreats to a tropical island, where she meets Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-kyun)—a businessman, fairy-tale prince, and the epitome of masculinity. Jonathan seduces her, only to trap her (almost literally) in a gilded cage. Her only way out of the toxic relationship? His death. To execute the perfect crime, Yeo-rae teams up with Kim Beom-woo (Gong Myung), a teenage neighbor and a devoted fan of her film career. If this short plot summary of “Killing Romance” sounds absurd, that’s precisely the point.

Director Lee Won-seok eschews subtlety in favor of kitsch, excess, and over-the-top spectacle. Every aspect of “Killing Romance” is dialed up to the maximum: from the acting to the plot to the staging. The film serves as a satire on everything begging to be mocked in the modern world: the film industry, fan culture, machismo, patriarchy, social media, capitalism, and environmental destruction. I’m not kidding—you’ll find every one of these themes in “Killing Romance”, wrapped in an ironic, postmodern package that softens the impact of its commentary without nullifying it.

At its core, though, Lee Won-seok’s creation is pure entertainment. The director deftly juggles film genres, ensuring the audience never has a dull moment. While comedy dominates, elements of crime, adventure, gangster films, and even musicals are seamlessly woven in. The climactic showdown, for example, unfolds as a musical duel between Jonathan’s supporters and Yeo-rae’s army of fans. The film’s rhythm is driven by the unfettered imagination of its creators, with each scene surprising viewers—if not with twists, then with increasingly outrageous ideas, such as a vengeful ostrich that appears out of nowhere, vanishes into the blue, and re-emerges in the film’s musical finale to seal the antagonist’s fate.

The actors thrive in this unique setting, particularly Lee Sun-kyun, who shines as a caricatured version of his iconic role as Mr. Kim in “Parasite”. His character embodies everything behind the term “toxic masculinity.” Jonathan is a spoiled teenager trapped in an adult’s body—abusive, possessive, competitive to the extreme, and utterly selfish. He would be easy to outright hate, but Sun-kyun imbues him with comedic flair, complicating our perception. To look more dignified in photos, Jonathan regularly glues on a fake mustache; after every success, no matter how trivial, he gives a thumbs-up and utters the iconic “Gites!”

We root for the protagonist while laughing at her grotesque adversary, despite—whether we like it or not—feeling a sliver of sympathy for him. This is thanks to Sun-kyun’s charisma, charm, and acting prowess. Tragically, this was one of the actor’s final roles. In December 2023, just months after the global premiere of Won-seok’s film, Sun-kyun died by suicide, succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning in his car. His untimely death is often attributed to societal pressures and the high moral standards imposed on South Korean celebrities—phenomena subtly critiqued in “Killing Romance”.

Foreign reviews have likened Won-seok’s film to Wes Anderson’s works. Indeed, the staging shows some notable similarities. However, Anderson has monopolized, in cinema and film criticism, an aesthetic built around meticulous symmetry. Anyone else daring to use pastel tones and symmetrical compositions risks inevitable comparisons to the Texan filmmaker. Yet “Killing Romance”—as is the case here—remains thoroughly original, bowing to no one and nothing.