Director Kim Ki-duk’s 2000 film, Seom, English-title: The Isle, is not the average romance film. A mute woman named Hee-jin (Suh Jung) leases houseboats on her lakefront property to various men, one of whom she falls in love with, the convict Hyun-shin (Kim Yoosuk). Towards the end of the film, they accidentally kill two people and submerge their bodies underwater. Hyun-shin’s remorse sparks him to flee from Hee-jin, but he soon returns to her when she self-mutilates herself. A brief segment follows in which Hyun-shin comforts Hee-jin after healing her wounds. In this sequence, The Isle condenses time within a singular space, yet the distinct intervals in time flow together due to the musical score that plays continuously — the soundbridge.

The sequence begins with a reflection on the water of the couple embracing on the edge of an old yellow houseboat in the center of the lake. Cut to an establishing wide shot of the entirety of the houseboat, appearing only in center frame. The vastness of the lake vignettes the frame, and the shoreline and trees lie in the far background. No clouds are in the sky, the water is still, and Hyun-shin waves Hee-jin with a fan. A quiet lapping of water and gentle, melodic music are the only sounds in the mix.

The next two shots in the sequence convey the forward progression of time, albeit in different ways. First, the proceeding shot jumps forward in time by dropping frames and on-screen action. Hyun-shin no longer fans Hee-jin but runs his fingers through her hair. An out-of-focus perspective of the lake from their vantage points follows, serving as a transitory shot. These two shots work together to bridge the visual information which comes before and after. While the sequence begins with the couple relaxing on the yellow houseboat, it ends with them applying a fresh coat of yellow paint to the houseboat exterior. They work their way around the houseboat with paint until their paint brushes eventually touch.

At several points in The Isle, including this sequence, the composition of a single floating houseboat, usually the yellow one, reappears. The Isle identifies the yellow houseboat not only as one singular object, but also one singular, distinctive space set apart from other spaces, namely the other houseboats or the shore. As such, events that unfold in isolation in this singular space relate to each other because their location is the same. Each additional visual image of the yellow houseboat refers back to the preceding events that occurred within this space. So, when the viewer sees Hyun-shin and Hee-jin relaxing on and painting the yellow houseboat in this sequence, they are reminded of the previous occasions featured in this space. The film reminds the viewer of the yellow houseboat’s most beautiful moments, such as when Hyun-shin and Hee-jin fall in love with each other. However, disturbing events take place here, as well: Hyun-shin’s attempted rape of Hee-jin, Hee-jin’s successful rape of Hyun-shin, each of their suicide attempts, murder, spying, etc. The image of the yellow houseboat as an isolated space constructs a relationship between all of these events through a shared setting, itself. Because the yellow houseboat remains isolated in the midst of an expansive lake, it takes on the image of an island, referring visually to the film title, The Isle. Thus, the film title comments not necessarily on islands or isles formed by geographic processes, but on spaces that are so isolated from each other that they function as geographic features within the greater setting or visual landscape of the film.

The Isle does not rely solely on visuals to bridge connections amongst different moments in the film. The images combined with music connect visual and audio information into one distinct unit, the sequence, to create meaning. In doing so, the music functions as a way to relay the mood of the sequence. The crafting of images and music together allows segments to accrue value for the duration of the music. Mood is best crafted when the images and music reinforce each other. A good example of evoking mood in film is another example by Kim, Address Unknown (2001). In the film’s final sequence, the very first shot depicts gloomy weather and a somber, low-note violin melody begins to play. As the sequence presents shots of dismal characters, actions, and events, the gloomy song plays until the film finally ends. Because the audio information, the song, does not change and is not interrupted for the duration of this segment, the film groups together all of the shots and attaches to them the depressing emotion evoked by the music. This way, the segment maintains a gloomy mood.

The Isle similarly reinforces images and music to create mood, connecting the shots of a happy couple lit brightly by the sun with a light-hearted musical score. Synthetic string instruments contribute to the rhythm of the song, set far back in the mix so as to achieve congruence through meter. The composer, Jeon Sang-yun, repeatedly uses the trick of nestling instruments at the bottom of the song’s mix, such as with a brass drum that faintly crashes during the cut between the image of a paint pail and the image of the houseboat with its fresh coat of paint. The subtlety of instruments that sound only once or twice adds a lighthearted effect to the song. In the foreground of the mix lies a piano score with a high-pitch melody and low-pitch beat, lending to musical stress on the first and third downbeat. This produces a light, colorful mood that evokes a sense of bliss and elation best described as romantic. In this sequence, The Isle takes on aspects of the romance genre — two characters are presented as being romantically involved, and the delightful music reinforces their actions and emotions.

Important to note is how the music in this sequence is part of a leitmotif, a repeated melodic phrase that accompanies the reappearance of an idea or situation. Leitmotifs in films apply additional meaning to images when they connect new information to familiar information that was gained previously. The Isle reinforces and connects ideas of islands with both the image of the floating houseboat and the leitmotif. What makes this romantic painting sequence disturbing is that the leitmotif occurs earlier in the film during Hyun-shin’s attempt to rape Hee-jin. The scene begins with Hee-jin and Hyun-shin eyeing each other from across the lake during a heavy rainstorm. Hee-jin steers to his yellow houseboat in her boat, gets out, and sits next to him. As the leitmotif begins to play, Hee-jin and Hyun-shin, who have never shared their affection for each other, passionately kiss. In one extremely wide long take, Hyun-shin forces himself onto Hee-jin and tears off her blouse. After thrashing at him to drive him away, she eventually pushes him into the water. He wades there as she gets in her boat and steers away.

The Isle truly subverts its application of the romance genre not only with the repeated image of the houseboat as an isle where horrific events occur, but also with a leitmotif that contrasts the beauty of the couple painting the yellow houseboat with the disgust of attempted rape. Implicitly, the leitmotif bridges tender romance with violent lust. But Kim and Jeon’s geniuses shine bright in how this leitmotif remains subtle and implicit — the notes remain the same but the performance varies, so as not to be immediately recognizable. While the painting sequence pacifies the rhythm of the string instruments and includes an intense piano melody, the rape scene softens the piano notes and regulates them to a harmony, and the string instruments louden and constitute both the rhythm and melody. Despite the variations in volume level and metric congruence, the pitch of each note, defined as the contour, and the composition of the score are exactly the same. When compared, both songs match up and their similarities are discernable. The viewer recognizes the song during the painting sequence but cannot immediately recall from where because it is not exactly the same as before. The film finds a way to repress the leitmotif during the rape scene by bestowing the song like a ghost to the bottom of the soundmix and boosting the volume of the heavy rain that plays over it. By doing so, the film ensures that the viewer hears the song but does not necessarily encode it as something immediately recognizable. Thus, this auditory repetition in the painting sequence inspires convulsion in the viewer, twisting pleasure into repulsion. Rhythmic contour applied to two separate instances signals an echo of the past, distorted and troublesome. 

So, the mood evoked in the painting sequence is not entirely romantic, but what Sigmund Freud refers to as uncanny. A subversion of the romance genre recurs in The Isle through what Freud refers to as “the principle of a repetition-compulsion in the unconscious mind” (11). As he explains when describing the sensation of uncanniness, something unfamiliar carries familiarity. The leitmotif is “nothing new or foreign, but something familiar and old—established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression” (13). Freud tackles the nature of uncanny sensations, theorizing that repressed emotion transforms into anxiety when revisited. “Something which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light,” exists as part of the leitmotif and its connection to the image of the floating houseboat (13). So, the lighthearted music in the painting sequence associates image and sound with a negative rather than positive mood.

This negative mood effectively layers “the feeling of dread and horror aroused by what is known or familiar” on top of the dreamy, picturesque images of Hee-jin and Hyun-shin’s romantic embrace (Chika Kinoshita, 106). Freud claims that the arousal of the uncanny creates “a double with a new meaning” that the nuance of memory applies to an already-existing impression (10). Because of the discernment that the painting sequence occurs in the same isolated visual and musical space as the rape scene, the sequence subverts the romantic mood into something unsettling. When The Isle applies the leitmotif already affiliated with a horrific event to its construction of the romance genre, a hybrid genre forms. Namely, this hybrid genre is the repulsion of the romance genre by the overbearance of the horrific. This hybrid can be called “uncanny horror” — attractive and alluring, yet spiteful and horrendous. The horror of The Isle lies in the complacency of Hee-jin and Hyun-shin’s romance as identified by the pervasiveness of unsettling memories. After the painting sequence they escape with their freshly painted houseboat to live elsewhere, and their isle which has become their home now carries with them memories best forgotten.

1. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1919. 

2. Kinoshita, Chika. "The Mummy Complex: Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Loft and J-horror." In Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema, edited by Jinhee Choi and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, 103-22. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2009.

3. The Isle, directed by Ki-duk Kim. (2000; South Korea: Myung Film Company Ltd.)