Cannes 2009: "Thirst."
"Thirst," Park Chan-wook's plague-vampire-priest-black-comedy-gothic-family-drama-noir, has enough going on for at least an entire other movie, if not two. Its developments are impossible to predict, but that's because half are unnecessary -- by the time clergyman-turned-secular-bloodsucker Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) and his lover Tae-joo (Kim Ok-bin) are hiding a body in the closet before hosting their weekly mahjong game, I could barely remember how everything started (Sang-hyun volunteers to be part of an experiment to cure a virus killing celibate male missionaries in Africa, and is unknowingly given a transfusion of vampire plasma that staves off the sickness). The disinterest in the wherefore of Sang-hyun's vampirism is played for laughs -- he's more troubled by the ethical dilemmas of drinking blood, which he rationalizes his way around by claiming one comatose victim had been dedicated in consciousness to feeding the hungry, and by planning on preying upon already suicidal targets he'll find...
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