Underwhelming, and really confusing. I did not like this film at all
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
In writer-director Kim Jee-woon's new film, Song Kang-ho's Kim Yeol is a movie director in the 1970s haunted by the recent death of his mentor and determined to succeed in his place and proves he's not a hack. Unsure about the ending of his latest film, a hilariously overblown and tonally spot on gothic family melodrama, also called Cobweb, he's convinced that 2 extra days of reshoots will turn it into the masterpiece he dreams of, though inevitably his plans begin to derail and chaos soon takes over his movie set. Partly a satire of the strict censorship regime which existed there back then when government script approval is required before any shooting can begin; and partly a farce where an increasingly desperate and obsessed director wrangles his cast and crew against a running clock and mounting obstacles in the form of surprise visits from government officials and on-set romantic entanglements, this is a deliriously entertaining and funny film, especially for a cine-literate audience who enjoys a peek behind the curtains to see how the smoke and mirrors work to produce cinematic magic on the screen. A delightful and grounded cast, especially for a Korean one, thankfully doesn't stray into their usual exaggerated over-acting; while a climactic sequence pushing Kim into a frenzy state as he attempts to get a meticulously planned one-take shot to finish his film is accompanied by the unexpectedly and brilliantly choice of Luxemborg's winning Eurovision entry from 1965, and proves that the South Koreans can do farce just as well as the British can. South Korea's belated answer to Truffaut's Day For Night turns out to be tremendous fun as competing obsessions, egos and ambitions of the cast and crew fire up on and off the sound stage to uproarious effect.