South Korea
2018 88 mins OV Korean Subtitles : English
“How do you travel to space without a spaceship?” “Get a job in an X-ray room.” Radiation be damned! When a scandalous X-ray of two people having sex surfaces at Love of Maria, a Seoul convent-turned-hospital, young nurse Yoon-young’s world is turned upside down. Convinced the photographs are hers, she ponders whether or not to quit her job. But on the following day, no one shows up to work out of a similar shame (because who hasn’t used the X-ray room for that?). Meanwhile, strange sinkholes start appearing all over the city; a patient shows up with a gunshot wound from peeling an apple, of all things, and let’s be honest, things aren’t looking up at home, either… Case in point: Yoon-young’s slacker boyfriend is now one of the many aimless youths tasked with filling the new and mysterious holes with dirt. Is that all there is to life? And what’s with the chatty pet catfish one of the hospital’s patients has left behind?
An infinitely charming and unpredictable debut from director Yi Ok-seop (GIRLS ON TOP), MAGGIE unfolds as a series of quirky, bizarre and interconnected vignettes interrogating the mysteries of the universe, the nature of trust, the wearing-down of relationships, and the wild feeling of uncertainty that accompanies becoming an adult in a strange, uncertain world. A bold film, unfolding in an almost stream-of-consciousness way, MAGGIE cuts from one idea to the next, with complete disregard for conventional three-act structure. Instead, director Yi stretches the possibilities of screenwriting: crafting a relationship dramedy out of digression rather than order, emotional vibrancy rather than reason. Take for example the titular Maggie: that it turns out to be a fish is only one of the weirder strokes that will make you fall in love with this film, unveiling a new and unique talent in Korean cinema. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
