Love and.. (DVD) (Korea Version) DVD Region All

Love and… was first developed as a short feature for the 8th Seoul Senior Film Festival. Zhang expanded it into an omnibus by adding three more chapters, each progressively stranger. The original first chapter begins as a black-and-white film in which an elderly patient takes chase after a nurse he likes while brandishing a knife. The befuddling scenario with Ahn Sung Ki and Moon So Ri pulls back into color to reveal a film set. An irascible gaffer, played by Park Hae Il, takes issue with the director's direction, and then takes off with a film canister.

Odd as it may be, the first chapter still holds to a narrative, but the ensuing chapters will focus on form and imagery rather than story. Reminiscent of the style of Zhang's documentary Scenery, the second chapter is basically a haunting slideshow of the interiors of an abandoned hospital, from a close-up of a potted plant to an eerily staged operating room. The third chapter is a silent film formed through editing together excerpts of the actors' other films with amusing dialogue intertitles. The surreal fourth chapter returns to the set of the first chapter and repeats the story – without the actors. The cuts and movements are replicated and synced with the original audio track, but the actors are removed, so you just see an empty chair moving, an apple rolling on its own and the camera panning down an empty hallway where a chase is occurring.

Considering its origin, Love and… started out as a work connecting the feelings of elderly people to film. While it's debatable how much understanding one can gain of senior citizens from that first chapter, it is clear that this is a film about film itself. Each chapter presents a different style of filmmaking, and the opening chapter comments on the filmmaking process itself with its film-within-a-film setup. Though its structure is experimental, Love and… is actually pointedly old-fashioned in many ways as Zhang integrates a black-and-white picture and a silent film into proceedings.

Love and… defies the boundaries of conventional filmmaking with an avant-garde yet sedate approach that can only play to arthouse and film fest audiences. The content is dry and puzzling, if not downright abstruse, but the form is interesting, inventive, occasionally cheeky and filled with love for the film medium.