by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

While it draws primarily on the influences of its mighty neighbours Hong Kong and Japan, Korean pop cinema betrays neither the lurid, overwrought melodrama that plagues many pics from HK, nor the disconcerting, clinical frostiness all too common to Japanese productions. In other words, "Aaah, just right." Add to that the dour, resigned Korean humour and ever-augmenting production values that can compete with the best of them and you have a national cinema to take note of.

In previous years, the Fantasia festival has done more than its share in drawing a spotlight over to the movies of South Korea, booking such standouts as the blockbuster Shiri, the engaging black comedy The Quiet Family and Attack the Gas Station, a brilliant bottling of teenage rage. As the festival returns this year, the Korean quotient is as strong as ever, especially in the opening week. In fact, this year’s kickoff flick is the Korean production Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (tonight, Thurs., July 17, 7 p.m. & July 21, 7:45 p.m.).

With a bigger budget than the aforementioned Shiri, Match Girl is the most expensive film ever made in Korea - and one of the most controversial. A straight-up, colour-by-numbers action flick this is not. It nods to both The Matrix and Cronenberg’s Existenz in that it’s about a lowly lunch-delivery guy who gets dragged into a real/unreal video-game world full of blazing firearms, black trenchcoats and Taoist touches. With its constant flip-flops, fake-out finales and back-to-zero restarts, its narrative owes more to Playstation than the familiar film world. Keep an eye out for Jin Xing, a former military officer turned China’s first out-andproud pop-culture transsexual, as the lesbian bounty hunter Lara.

SHY SPY

Equally unpredictable but less attuned to hormonal teens is Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (July 18, 7:20 p.m.; July 19, 7 p.m. & July 20, 4:30 p.m.), an excellent character study loaded with bleak comedy, squirminducing cruelty and moments of tremendous pathos. It would be unfair to give away much more than that it’s initially about a green-haired deaf-mute and his gruff girlfriend staging a kidnapping that goes wrong. The Mr. Vengeance in question is played by the capable Song Kang-ho, also seen in The Quiet Family, The Foul King and Park’s preceeding film Joint Security Area, a touching exploration of the tensions between North and South Korea and the hopes and reservations held out by the possibility of reunification.

Double Agent (July 21, 9:30 p.m. & July 22, 7:30 p.m.) treads similar ground, although it has less to do with resolving the differences between the two countries than with the isolation and self-doubt that are part and parcel of the espionage trade. Shiri’s Han Suk-kyu plays Agent Lim, a North Korean stationed in East Berlin who defects to the West in 1980. After a gruelling interrogation, he’s drawn into the South Korean intelligence service, who fail to recognize that he’s still batting for the other team. His contact is Su-mee, a classical-music DJ at a radio station, with whom he’s soon falling in love (though he’ll be damned he’ll show it - his spy’s poker face remains intact throughout). It’s a grim and melancholy scenario that transcends ideology and scratches the universal wound of painful solitude.

FIRE, ICE AND RINGING STEEL

The best of the bunch here has to be Musa the Warrior (July 19, 9:15 p.m. & July 20, 9 p.m.). It’s a sweeping, blood-soaked historical number that bristles with the ring of clashing steel, unparalleled by anything out there right now except possibly Thailand’s Bang Rajan (screening at Fantasia on August 9). The term "epic" doesn’t necessarily apply as the story takes place over a fairly tight timeframe. Set in medieval Asia, it follows a motley crew of diplomats, soldiers and slaves from the kingdom of Koryo as they are rejected and exiled by China’s ascendant Ming lords. The group’s Ming guards are slaughtered by a band of their Yuan rivals, freeing the Koreans to return home. However, the Yuan troops have kidnapped the Ming princess Pu-yong (played with regal grace by Chinese actress Zhang Zi-yi, best known for her turn in Crouching Tiger). Korean General Choi chooses her rescue - which would be ideal to smooth over the grief with the Ming clan - rather than hightailing it for home.

What follows is basically an extended chase, setting the stage for all sorts of daring strategies, internal conflicts, noble sacrifices and furious hack ’n’ slash mêlées. The final standoff sees what’s left of our heroes holed up in an abandoned castle, staring down more Yuan troops than they could hope to take on. The fierce fighting is framed by flames behind and snowfall in front - an achingly beautiful tableau, but then the whole film is gorgeously, gorgeously shot.

That’s hardly it for Korean flicks this year. Also worth checking out are Phone (July 27, 7 p.m. & July 29, 7:45 p.m.), a Ring-style creeper with an unusually eerie possessed tyke, the gritty cop flick Public Enemy (July 31, 7:15 p.m. & Aug. 1, 7:15 p.m.) and the swords-and-sorcery frenzy Legend of Gingko (Aug. 3, 2:30 p.m.). My personal fave, though, is the hyperactive, hysterical and heartfelt Saving My Hubby (Aug. 8, 7 p.m.). Imagine Erma Bombeck in Run Lola Run and you’ve got a handle on this memorable offering.

>> Movie Listings