Breathless Interview - Yang Ik-june

Following an advance screening of Breathless last December, Sulaco had the opportunity to pose a few questions to director and star of Breathless, Yang Ik-june...

I grew up within a Korean society and family environment where I was personally exposed to psychological, physical, verbal and emotional violence. Although I had been acting for 10 years, there never seemed to be a role that expressed my feelings or thoughts. So I naturally progressed to writing and directing a movie that could express all my anger and rage that was pent up inside me. The movie was never intended for an audience but for myself to express and purge all the negative emotions inside of me and get rid of them, such as in a cremation.

The adolescent and child actors in the movie gave amazing performances, they were clearly well cast and well directed, what were the biggest challenges in directing them in what was quite an emotionally demanding movie?

Initially when I was working with them, I treated and perceived them as child actors. The first few shooting did not go well. Upon contemplation I decided to treat them as any other actor rather than a child actor. When giving them this respect, they responded by being able to express the intensity of feelings and emotions that I wanted.

Not for now but I am sure that I will use some members of the cast or staff in different productions in the future.

I myself took away mixed feelings at the end of the movie. Fear loss and anger but also other more hopeful feelings. What feelings do you want the audience to take with them?

I don’t think it’s my responsibility to create what feelings the audience takes with them. I simply delivered what I wanted to express my feelings and I believe it is the up to the audience to take whatever they do from the film.