To You, From Me

One of the most gleefully offensive films ever made anywhere, Jang's excoriation of trash culture is directed specifically at Korean society in the go-getting '90s, but there's nothing parochial about its satire. Three main characters (a blocked writer/plagiarist, an impotent bank clerk with a thing about Bonnie and Clyde, and a factory girl/ex-jailbird) wrestle with each other and with weighty issues like pornography, fraud, drug use, civic corruption, prostitution, phoney activism, gay fascism - you name it. Relentlessly vulgar and committedly sexy, the film shows up American trash-culture celebrants like John Waters for the kindergarten figures they are.