Stream It Or Skip It?
Madame Aema was a 1982 film that broke box office records in South Korea, especially for what was essentially an erotic drama. In the new dramedy Aema, the making of that film is fictionalized, with the story featuring a veteran actress who doesn’t want to bare it all anymore and a young actress who wants to become a star banding together to change the industry.
AEMA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: First class on an airplane. A man walks in from coach with a newspaper and an envelope and approaches a beautiful woman sitting by the window.
The Gist: The woman is Jeong Hee-ran (Lee Hanee), one of South Korea’s top movie stars, who in her nine year film career has been willing to show and do just about anything. The man is her assistant, Park Yeong-bae (Jang Nam-su), who nervously gives her the script for her new film, Madame Aema. She sees the multiple scenes where she’s topless or naked, disgustedly throws the script aside, and lights a cigarette (it’s 1981, by the way, so smoking on planes is just fine).
Gu Jung-ho (Jin Seon-kyu), CEO of Shinsung Films, is holding a party and is waiting for Hee-ran to arrive. He tells the gathered industry crowd that in the ’80s, sex is going to sell movie tickets. Hee-ran arrives and, incensed over the script, shoves Jung-ho in the pool. Hee-ran calls a press conference for the next day and tells reporters that she will no longer do nudity on screen.
Jung-ho angrily decides to demote Hee-ran to a supporting role, which he can do according to her contract. He tells Kwak In-woo (Cho Hyun-chul), the young director of the film, that he wants to hold an open audition to find a new Aema. For his part, In-woo wants to rewrite the film to make it as artistic as it is erotic.
The auditions, which Hee-ran sits in on, don’t go well, until In-woo sees Shin Joo-ae (Hyo-rin Bang) smoking on the studio lot, having just missed the audition. She tap dances for him, and he sees something in her that deserves a callback. But when she goes for test photos, Hee-ran comes by and accuses her of sleeping with either the director or Jung-ho. Joo-ae leaves and decides it’s not worth it, even when an investigator for the studio finds her dancing at a nightclub. She changes her mind, under one condition: That the studio make her into a star like Hee-ran.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Aema feels very much in line — though a bit less frantic — with shows like The Studio, though it has the period feel of shows like Minx (albeit taking place a decade later than that show).
Our Take: Aema strikes the right tone in its first episode. It’s a period piece about a star and a rookie actress taking chances to stand up for themselves as they make an erotic film that will be the talk of early ’80s Korea. Madame Aema is an actual film, released in 1982 and one of the biggest box office hits of the era.
Created by Lee Hae-young, Aema fictionalizes the making of this film, and it doesn’t take itself or its characters too seriously. There are plenty of funny moments in the first episode, but it also gives both Lee Hanee and Bang Hyo-rin the room to explore how their respective characters are able to make some changes to the industry and end up becoming big (or in Hee-ran’s case, bigger) stars as a result.
What’s fun about the situation that’s being set up in this first episode is that Hee-ran is taking her demotion to a supporting role somewhat in stride, especially once she meets Joo-ae and realizes she has some fight in her, as well. Hee-ran figures she can leverage her relationships to become the lead in a more artistic film that a top director is writing, and bring it in to Shinsung Films so she can complete her contract there.
She’s not exactly being a team player with the studio head, Jung-ho, and director, In-woo, but she certainly goes from wanting to stop the open audition to realizing that she’s got someone she can shape and mold in Joo-ae. It’s a story about women taking some power in a business and country where they had none in the early ’80s, and it’s told in a way that is very matter-of-fact and definitely funny.
Sex and Skin: There’s “nudity” in the first episode, but shot in a way that you don’t really see anything.
Parting Shot: Joo-ae comes in for her formal audition and tells In-woo that she’ll work on the film “if you turn me into the next Jeong Hee-ran,” a notion that makes Hee-ran smile. In other words, Joo-ae doesn’t want to be exploited as an inexperienced actress; if she’s going to expose it all, she wants to become a star.
Sleeper Star: Cho Hyun-chul is appropriately sweaty and awkward as rookie director Kwak In-woo, who wants to make a much more artistic film than the studio head wants.
Most Pilot-y Line: Jung-ho has so little regard for the secondary role in Madame Aema he keeps saying the character’s name is “Eriko,” and In-woo has to correct him that the name is “Erika.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Aema is a funny, fast-moving story about the changing world of Korean cinema in the 1980s and how two women changed things even more by taking some power from the men in the industry.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
