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BEL_AMI
May 31, 2015
In which we consider an example
of genre fiction, and observe
that it's formulaic nature is
used as a vehicle. The things required, but not
specified by the formula are
This is a story with many the real point of using the
small interesting things formula.
hung on a relatively
conventional framework.
The example at hand:
the Korean comedy-drama
series "Bel Ami" (2013). This has a chain of influences back
through western culture that I know
not of. There was a book by Guy de
Maupassant in 1885, and a movie based
on it in 2012 (e.g. with Uma Thurman).
WALKING_BACKWARDS
"Bel Ami" (or, let's say "Pretty Boy") is
about a young man who is so stunningly
attractive to women that it amounts to a The male lead is the same
supernatural power. Among the main actor who plays the lead
characters, there is a Nice Girl from his member of A.N. Jell in
home town who is dedicated to him despite the show typically called
his rude and dismissive treatment of her, "You're Beautiful".
and a second man that she meets, with whom
she has much in common. There is a Second WHERE_ANGELS_GO_NUN_FOLLOWS
Man who falls madly in love with her, and
in a reasonable world she would drop the
rude jerk of a "Bel Ami", but in these
stories women remain faithful to their
first loves, even-- or especially-- if
they don't deserve it.
So, it's the usual triangle, but that's not the
interesting stuff.
There's another angle to the main plot: After
the Bel Ami's mother dies, he has a series of
encounters with a beautiful mysterious woman Perhaps my favorite
who knows way too much about him. Through her melodramatic plot
he gradually learns that he has some device: the-beautiful-
connection to a rich, powerful family, but mysterious-woman-
they appear to want to have nothing to do with who-knows-too-much.
him (he's an embarassing bastard son, etc.). It beats Chandler's
"have someone walk
This too is not the interesting stuff, in the door holding
and indeed, there are some completely a gun".
ridiculous plot twists here--
SPOILERS
e.g. the Second Man also turns out to have some
connections to the same rich family.
The Beautiful Woman, for reasons of her own, sets about
crafting the Bel Ami into a weapon to attack this
family. First, he must learn much about the ways of
the world, and she supplies the start of his program:
he must use his one and only existing talent and win
over a series of powerful women.
Now this is where it gets interesting, or at least, it
turns out to generate some interesting features.
There's a steady stream of powerful and/or knowledgeable
woman introduced throughout the story, all with very
different characteristics...
For example, The Electric Fairy, a very successful
fortune-teller/psychic whose apparatus needs to be
seen in action, not described.
In general, this is a story about a man who needs to
learn some things, and who does learn some things,
which sounds simple enough but isn't really done
very well all that often.
Among other things, this jerk learns to stop being a
jerk, which makes it a little less distressing that
the female lead eventually lands with him (though
the amount of slack she cuts him along the way is
ridiculous).
This female character, Kim Bo Tong, is
another aspect of the story that generates Her name apparently means
interesting little bits. She is an "normal", which is pretty
extremely quirky freak of a Nice Girl, funny in this context,
with a dorky/kawaii fashion sense, and a though it occurs to me
penchant for repurposing found objects. that the English version
of that joke would seem
This does a few different things for silly ("Hi, I'm Cathy Normal.")
the story: most of the women the Bel
Ami needs to work through are all Maybe: "Susie Bland"?
very elegant, carefully put together
women (Gangnam style?) -- the
cheap-living, artist-freak Bo Tong
comes up with some looks that make a
nice contrast.
The secondary, doomed romance with
the Second Man is based on his
immediate appreciation of her
qualities, he and she are perfectly
in sync on almost everything (why
she wants to deal with the hassles The scenes where the female lead
of the prickly, abrasive Bel Ami meets her male freak-counterpart
who understands her not at all is a are some of the things that work
puzzle without an answer-- her the best in the entire story-- he
answer is just that you don't need describes some completely absurd
reasons to love someone, you just thing he's been doing, and she
do it-- my explanation is "genre immediately responds "Oh, that's
convention"). so *cool*!", and you can see
him thinking: "wow, she doesn't
think I'm crazy!"
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