BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: dangerous liasons.

PIERRE Choderlos de Laclos’s novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has had a number of glossy, attractive re-workings. This Korean adaptation has similarities to its other more famous siblings (Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont, Cruel Intentions) – essentially it’s beautiful people doing despicable things to each other. And while it’s hard to really care about the awfulness on display at times, Untold Scandal is an immaculately shot, rather sexy version of a society in freefall and moral decay.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Korean anarchy.

I’VE SEEN the brilliant Attack the Gas Station! twice in large crowds now, and have seen totally divergent reactions. Half the crowd walked out during the Film Society screening, perhaps put off the dubbed American accents which sounded positively Brechtian. The other time was in a class studying Korean cinema, and the audience were hooting and clapping along with the film – and perhaps to fully appreciate how pointed the film really is, an understanding of its targets, like the latter audience would have had, might assist.

GREGOR CAMERON reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: five Kiwi shorts.

THERE’s something very powerful about seeing a generation grow up in front of you. Parents know this. At the Film Society on Monday evening members were treated to a programme that seemed to do this right in front of them.

The evening belonged to Donogh Rees as each short film featured her performances. Our first meeting occurs through Pheno Was Here (Richard Riddiford, 1982) which also stars Kelly Johnson fresh from filming Goodbye Pork Pie the year before. Significantly this is a film made post-Springbok and there is, along with their familiar joyous play, a darker pitch, and a world less worthy. Rees and Johnson are the young people trying to evolve, on the run, armed with spray cans yet seem somewhat lost. In this world justice seems divorced from right and wrong, no better underpinned than when Duncan Smith’s cop catches up with Pheno (Rees) at the airport and instead of arresting her buys another ticket and leaves New Zealand with her. The film serves as a pocket reminder to those of us that lived through it of how ambiguous we felt about our country back then.