Lovely sets, costumes and cinematography set this apart from the usual softcore skin flicks. The protagonist Kim Gyu Ri is too beautiful to pass off as a man.
Plot is a little thin and staccato. Nudity is tasteful if sometimes too frequent. But if you see this movie as a celebration of sensuality then it becomes OK in context. One scene of 2 lesbian performers left me in stitches because one of them had such an obvious boob job. Overall marked up mainly for technical aspects and the beautiful Ms Kim.
Portrait of a Beauty
2008 [KOREAN]
Drama / Romance
Plot summary
Born to a family of established court painters, seven-year-old Yoon-jeong is a young girl gifted at painting. However, the pressure is on her brother to carry on the proud family tradition, as women aren’t allowed to become professional painters. While her brother trains to take his place in the court, Yoon-jeong helps him out by secretly painting for him. The little girl’s life is turned upside down when her brother kills himself. In order to preserve the family honor, she is forced to take her brother’s name and lives as a man. Yun-bok’s genius and talent captures the heart of another great master of the time, Kim Hong-do. But her daring depictions of women are condemned by the royal institute as obscene. Yun-bok meets Kang-mu and falls deeply in love. For the first time, she feels the strong desire to abandon everything she has built and simply be a woman in front of the man she loves. Kang-moo sacrifices all for his love as well.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
September 06, 2021 at 10:37 PM
Director
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Tasteful And Beautifully Filmed
Beautiful executed adult movie
The main leads are indeed beautiful and as other K-movies, the adult scene were beautifully executed. You won't find disgusting scenes like in the western movies.
The actings are good. The story is quite interesting but too bad not very well explored. Should give more focus to all main characters and give depth to their emotional development, esp they got very good actors in this movie.
Nice visuals but lacks substance
This movie is like a beautiful painting. It looks nice, but somehow you just can't appreciate its beauty.
It is mainly a tragedy which revolves around the main character who goes by the name "Shin Yun Bok", disguised as her deceased brother. "Shin Yun Bok" is played by Kim Min Sun (now known as Kim Gyu Ri), who was not too bad in portraying the life of a female struggling in an era of chauvinism. The rest of the cast were not really impressive.
The movie was unable to make the audience feel for the characters. Perhaps the character development was ineffective. It does not have the impact of "Oldboy" or even "Tae Guk Gi", where one just empathizes with the central characters.
Other things I'd pick on are:
1) "Shin Yun Bok" looks too feminine in her disguise, where no one would believe she was a man;
2) the opening scene of the young "Shin Yun Bok";
3) excessive sex scenes like the two models in the ring.
It is not surprising that hardly any viewers bothered to review this movie.