Gina Kim follows-up her acclaimed Invisible Light with Never Forever, another exploration of the provocative intersections between Korean and Korean American culture.
Gina Kim's 2006 film Never Forever achieves in one fell swoop what a generation of cultural theorists have been rooting for: the masculinization of the heterosexual Asian male in popular media, and a viable alternative to the "marriage plot" in narrative. Even more impressive: Kim's film is also a joy to watch.
Sophie (The Departed's Vera Farmiga), the film's empty, pretty protagonist must make a choice. Her lovely suburban nest and handsome, virile, Korean American husband are missing something: a baby. David's low sperm count and high-powered ego lead Sophie to find an unsavory alternative to fertility treatments in Jinah, a down-on-his-luck illegal Korean immigrant with features and physique that strikingly match David's. After Jinah is turned down from selling his sperm because of his illegal status, Sophie recruits him to impregnate her for money. Predictably, what begins as the self-sacrifice of a future mother becomes a sensual pleasure for Sophie. Sophie becomes pregnant, caught between her financially powerful husband and her sexually enlightening lover.
Without the legitimately compelling sex appeal of both male characters, the dramatic tension of Sophie's choice between the two men would fail to support the film's narrative arc. At the risk of associating Kim's work improperly within a colonial context, it should be noted that not since Indochine has a relationship between a Caucasian woman and Asian man been shot with such unapologetic eroticism. Kim's honest and direct portrayal of Sophie's desires makes palpable the sensual strength of Asian male sexuality within an American context. Moreover, unlike the extremely violent Asian men of contemporary Asian kung fu cinema, Kim suggests the paradigm of a strong Asian heterosexual male within a more realistic domestic context.
Kim responds directly and forcefully to the questioning of Asian male masculinity in America. (Not coincidentally, Kim's husband and producer, Kyung Hyun Kim, authored the film theory text The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema.) Taken in dialogue with contemporary gender theory and cultural studies, the great strength of Kim's film lies in its fresh and creative gender balance. Kim creates strong, masculine, and appealing Asian heterosexual male characters, yet ends by offering her female protagonist a life free from patriarchal domination.
[Spoiler alert] What starts as a film about Sophie's desire to become pregnant for her husband ends with Sophie, happy, pregnant and on her own. As the film closes on Sophie with another swollen belly, on the beach, playing with her young son, Kim deliberately obscures Sophie's relationship status. Much of the beginning of the film centers on Sophie's desire to please her husband, David, and then later, her feelings of compulsion toward her lover, Jinah. Kim's choice to end the film with Sophie alone works as a feminist statement and, more importantly, fits coherently and naturally within the film's larger narrative of Sophie's challenging relationships with the men in her life. [end spoilers]
Never Forever will be released commercially in both the U.S and Korea. The film carries intriguing stamps of both places. Kim, though currently living and working in the U.S. as an instructor in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard, identifies herself first and foremost as a Korean cultural worker. Despite the American context of her most recent film, Kim's characters, particularly her female characters, bear strong affinities with Korea. Sophie's mother-in-law, the bible-thumping family dowager, and Jinah's cute, yet innocent girlfriend populate the landscape of characters that could have stepped out of contemporary Korean television. However, most striking is Sophie, who perhaps plays the first ever blonde, blue-eyed Korean soap opera heroine. Sophie doesn't die at the end like so many other Korean female matinee idols. Yet her tentative, near-silent carriage, the way in which her husband praises her "self-sacrifice," and her seemingly endless wardrobe of one and a half inch pumps and knee length dresses suggests a feminine form indigenous either to 1950s America, or more accurately, contemporary Korean drama.
At times, Sophie's prime pumps and unbounded self-sacrifice make her implausible as an American female character. However, Farmiga's entrancing silence and strength bring Sophie beyond type. Moreover, Kim's choice of endings, in which Sophie is happily unmoored from either of her love interests, provides a surprising depth and intensity that gathers steadily throughout the course of the film.
A lot is going on in Never Forever's gender and cultural politics. Kim ultimately shows her mettle as a director by being able to fluidly incorporate a thought-provoking narrative and tranquilly-shot, highly watchable visual aesthetic.