The Hole Story
Quirky, metaphysical '3-Iron' swings just fine

In a classic comedy routine, Groucho Marx trades barbs with some officious opponent, until Groucho finally exclaims, "Aw, why don't you go home to your wife? Better yet, I'll go home to your wife," he adds devilishly. "Outside of the improvement, she'll never know the difference."

The apparent sanctity of hearth, home, and married life seems to be getting equally short shrift in 3-Iron, not, in fact, a golfing movie per se, but an oddly beguiling metaphysical fairy tale from Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…And Spring). At the center of the story is Tae-suk (played with Holy Fool sweetness by Jae Hee), a young man on a motorcycle who breaks into urban houses while the homeowners are away. The surprise is, he's neither a thief nor a pervert: he spends the night, tidies up, repairs broken items, even scrubs the family laundry by hand before moving on the next day. Outside of the improvement, they don't know the difference.

One evening, he moves into a fancy home he doesn't realize is still occupied—by Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon), the bruised young wife of an abusive businessman. She prowls around in the shadows observing him, losing her fear. He runs off when he finally sees her, but he returns in time to interfere when her prodigal husband assaults her. (Tae-suk's weapon of choice is the husband's eponymous club, with which the young man whacks some well-aimed golf balls.) Sun-hwa rides off with Tae-suk and they embark on what is not so much a crime spree, as an unorthodox courtship. (No crime is ever committed except trespassing, although there is one nasty accident whose outcome is never explored.)

Tae-suk and Sun-hwa exchange not a single word of dailogue, and their story flows onscreen with the antic, mysterious grace of a silent film by a master like Keaton. With no backstory, we live in the moment with the young couple as they invent a subversive, yet benign alternate reality to the stressful, consumerist, sometimes brutal modern lives around them. Tae-suk's penchant for shooting digital photos of himself in front of the framed family photos in each house suggests an intuitive drive to create a family life for himself he doesn't have. He and Sun-hwa put on the dressing gowns of their unwitting hosts, posing themselves in more loving domestic tableaux than most of the bickering absent couples display in their own homes. In the one place whose owners truly love each other, the vibe is so strong, the nomadic couple chooses that home to make love for the first time.

When the law inevitably catches up with the young lovers, the movie soars into the metaphysical. Symbolism may (or may not) mean more than dramatic action in the final third, the interpretation of which will separate romantics and dreamers from more earthbound viewers. Rich in ideas, and engrossingly staged, it's a lyrical mix of comedy, melodrama, and magic realism.

3-IRON With Jae Hee and Lee Seung-yeon. Directed by Kim Ki-duk. Rated R. 95 minutes. In Korean, with English subtitles. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, May 26, 2005