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VILLAIN AND WIDOW

By Jae-Gon SON

SIDUS - as PROD

Comedy - Completed 2010

A big-time robbery attempt gets hampered by a team of widow and daughter.

- Year of production
- 2010
- Genres
- Comedy
- Countries
- KOREA (South)
- Languages
- KOREAN
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 105 mn
- Director(s)
- Jae-Gon SON
- Writer(s)
- Jae-Gon SON
- Producer(s)
- Sang-Oh YOON
- Synopsis
- Lively, yet crowded night scenes in Hong Kong: a shopping district packed with tourists, street vendors offering a variety of food, and a Chinese souvenir market. Behind all the neon lights, there are shabby narrow buildings crammed together in a back alley, where a man walks in the drizzle, carrying a suitcase. He walks into an old hotel, nervously conscious of who is walking after him. Inside, the middle-aged protagonist, Chang-ho, greets him. The man starts babbling, taking out clothes and other odd goods from his suitcase. “This is what they call Blue Dragon Porcelain, the china teacup used by nobles during Ming Dynasty. The Japanese army stole it when they were in China. I heard it’s worth at least US$1 million in Japan. What a price for a little teacup, huh? ” He shows a black-and-white picture of a little teacup. “So, where is it?” “Back home.” “Where? In Korea? So, you came all the way down to Hong Kong to show me just one little picture?” Chang-ho questions the man.
  Two years later. Chang-ho is staring at an ad that reads “Room for Rent. 2nd Floor’’ as he stands in front of a two-story townhouse in the suburbs of Korea. He rents the room, disguised as a novelist with a thick beard, straggly hair, and a worn-out jacket. The house is owned by two eccentric women, and supposedly contains the million-dollar teacup, hidden inside. The landlady, Yeon-ju is a breathtakingly beautiful young widow who curses profusely. Her daughter, Sung-ah is a short, 15-year-old girl with thick black-framed glasses and a sulky face, who was once a child model and now demands drastic plastic surgery. The two women and their neighbors become suspicious of the new neighbor/writer Chang-ho, who plays tricks on them in an effort to find the treasure. As time passes by, the treasure hunt becomes a more complicated and puzzling journey than imagined.
  DIRECTOR’S PROFILE
  SON Jae-gon initially gained popularity with his short The Man Who Watched Too Much(2000), inspired by his favorite director Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. The movie was so sensational that it later became his directorial debut feature Hurchigook the Director(2001). He went on to write the first Korean parody movie Funny Movie(2002) and to write and direct My Scary Girl, the 2006 surprise hit that turned the Korean film industry upside down with its one-of-a-kind character setup and quick-witted dialogue. My Scary Girl was the first movie referred to as a "comic romantic thriller" and earned him the best screenplay award at MBC Film Awards, Pusan Critics Awards, and the new director award at Director's Cut. The film, made for under $1 million, attracted more than 2.4 million admissions in Korea and made the two main leads national stars. His follow-up film Villain and Widow is a crime comedy filled with his signature wit and imagination.
  DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
  As a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s, I have wanted to make a comedy about a villain for a long time. Villain and Widow is about a middle-aged man who has been through a lot and moves in with a helpless woman and her daughter to prey on them, dreaming of overnight wealth. The villain’s scheme starts out quite successfully, but eventually unravels. He begins to realize that he is only getting old. When I first had this idea, I felt confident that it would be a fun, commercial movie and I still do feel that way. But then, during the last three years, I had to overcome writer’s block and suffer bodily changes. As I'm aging, I feel more like the villain in the movie, who realizes as he gets old that his life hasn’t worked out the way he had planned it. Once we become conscious of our age, everything changes. No one can get away from it, including myself, the villain, the victim, her daughter, and nor can you, either.
- Partners & financing
- PPP Goal: To find (an) international co-production partner(s) and to make pre-sales