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The first day a girl dies with her mind emptied
Maybe she remembered the truth.
The second day a girl dies with her legs mutilated.
Maybe she was close to the truth.
The third day a girl dies with her ears cut off.
Maybe she heard the truth.
The fourth day a girl dies with her tongue ripped out.
Maybe she told the truth.
The sixth day a girl dies with her hands severed.
Maybe she wrote the truth.
The seventh day a girl will die...
Within the stifling and oppressive school walls of a Korean all-girls high school, there are two girls (Shin Yeon and Hyo Shin) who love each other, share a diary, and whisper secrets to one another. They bring life to those empty pages, adorning them with writings in vibrant colors, photographs, candies, and origami. They package their love as if it were a paper box. The diary falls into the hands of Min-Ah, a curious and friendly girl, who quickly learns all the secrets of her two classmates. Their love is extreme and emphasized: "if one of us dies first, the other must follow on a rainy day". Initially, the situation becomes amusing, but there is something more unsettling in this adolescent lesbian relationship: the tension between the two, Hyo Shin's relationship with the teacher, Shin Yeon's jealousy...
One day Hyo Shin throws herself off the school roof.
On paper, it seems like a teenage drama like so many others, with some (rare) purely oriental horror twists, but "Memento Mori" is much more complex and poignant than it seems: the story is rich in metaphors, visual-stylistic inventions, flashbacks, poetry, and emotions. It is not prolix and empty cinema, but that type of cinema that exudes feelings, extremely difficult to find among purely commercial and mainstream products. Yes, because "Memento Mori" is not an underground, independent, or auteur film, but the SEQUEL of a mediocre Korean horror titled "Whispering Corridors", a fear blockbuster that is a cult phenomenon in the East.
The thriller-horror structure of its predecessor completely disappears here, in favor of an intense and sorrowful melodrama: a love story destined for tragic consequences.
The horror element (imposed by the production, which demanded the no.2 of "Whispering Corridors") is resolved in a couple of emotional shocks, but they are not randomly placed in the drama just to satisfy the producers; they are introduced sparingly and are the source of Min-Ah's mental horror. Horror born from guilt and inner discomfort: a hidden horror within each of us.
"Memento Mori" is a ferocious work, where man's evils (Homophobia, Xenophobia, Ambition, Jealousy) are crudely examined.
Every frame is extremely dense and sublime: the classroom kiss scene between the two protagonists, sudden, long, and passionate, is the culmination of a gem that must be recovered (The other extras did not know what would happen in that scene and the astonished and shocked reactions of those present are, therefore, absolutely real).
Thus, the classmates of the two lovers are nothing more than colorless and shapeless beings, brash and arrogant, homophobic and xenophobic for no reason. The scene in which the ghost of Hyo-Shin appears in the auditorium is nothing but proof: the girls run away, get confused, cling to the glass doors, flattening themselves until they become a single substance (hatred?), with all those identical uniforms, screaming and crying. And so, not by chance, Min-Ah (the only one understanding with the two girls) is swept away by the girls running, almost trampled on the ground, left alone and lying on the cold floor. Meanwhile, a storm breaks out, the rain slams against the windows, and Shin-Yeon walks melancholically towards her sad fate.
A direct film of denunciation, like a punch to the stomach, yet at the same time hermetic and seductive. A must-see. If all commercial films were like this...
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