Festivals - Fantasia 2020: Beauty Water will do its North European Premiere

By Mulder, 08 august 2020

Beauty is always superficial, but scenes of bodily horror still make us shudder to the bone. Adapted from a very popular web comic, Beauty Water is director Cho Kyung-hun's first feature film. Horror in animation is definitely very hard to achieve. We can hardly fear for the lives of drawn characters. After all, we've seen them so often crushed by pianos or anvils, and then carry on as if nothing had happened.

Cho Kyung-hun decided to focus not on what might kill us, but rather on what we might be forced to learn to live with. And that's what's so scary, the worst horrors we often do to ourselves. Beauty comes at a price, and that price is too high. An ambiguous anti-hero, Yaeji bluntly challenges Korean morality and all its preconceptions. Visually speaking, Cho and his team at Studio Animal have done an impeccable job. Everything is perfectly convincing: the fantasy, the glamour, but also the disgusting and grotesque aspect hiding just behind it.

Synopsis :
In a society as obsessed with physical appearance as today's South Korea, ugliness is a fate far worse than death. Yaeji isn't very pretty, and on top of that, she's overweight. She works as a stylist at a television station, and this job is a constant source of abuse and disrespect for her. Only the handsome Jihoon in the production department is really kind to her. When Yaeji suddenly becomes the laughing stock of social media, the unbearable humiliation reaches its climax. A quick solution to the problem suddenly presents itself: Eau de Beauté, a product available on the market, although it's a bit dodgy. Too good to be true? Desperate, Yaeji launches himself anyway. Before long, she will regret this decision... much worse than death.

Beauty Water
Directed by Kyung-hun Cho
Produced by Jeon Byung-jin
Written by Lee Han-bin
Music by Hong Dae-sung
Cinematography : Moon Seong-cheol
Edited by : Cho Kyung-hun

(Source : Site official Fantasia 2020)