Director: Min Kyu-dong
Country of origin and year of release: South Korea, 2008
Adapted from a Japanese manga, Antique Bakery tells the story of wealthy, privileged Jin-hyeok (Ju Ji-hoon) who, after having led something of a playboy lifestyle for much of his young life, announces to his family that he intends to settle down by opening a cake shop. His reasoning? Women like cakes, therefore he'll be able to meet lots of girls.
As you might expect, his reason for wanting to open a cake shop isn't as straight forward as all that. The audience is given to understand, very early on, that something terrible and traumatic happened to him as a young child. We don't know exactly what but the scene in which he violently vomits up the cake made by his patisserie chef, and the flashback to his adolescence, in which he equally violently rejects the clumsily expressed love of school boy Min Seon-woo (Kim Jae-wook) offer some kind of clue. He is, at least initially, and to some extent throughout the film, an obnoxious character, but he's also compelling and sympathetic in his quest to understand how he ended up the way he is. In the depiction of this central character and in the other three central characters in this film, Min Kyu-dong doesn't shy away from depicting male fragility and vulnerability alongside male bravado and machismo.
Min Seon-woo, Jin-hyeok's spurned schoolmate, is recruited by him as a patisserie chef and - despite having bounced back more than admirably following his crushing rejection by Jin-hyeok - his love god status contrasts with the blowback from some of his more impulsive sexual decisions. This has led to a certain amount of criticism for the film in that Min Seon-woo is proclaimed as "A gay of demonic charm" who can quite literally charm the pants off any man, suggesting the stereotype of the sexually promiscuous, predatory gay man.
Due to the wider complexities of Min Seon-woo's character, which quickly become apparent, I feel that the stereotype is exploited rather than confirmed to. Min Seon-woo might be enjoying an extremely robust sex life, but he's also regularly sacked from his various chef jobs, leaving behind him a trail of inconsolable kitchen staff who have fallen in love with him. While Min Seon-woo's sexual magnetism is largely played for laughs, it is also used to make important points: He was subjected to a volley of homophobic verbal abuse by Jin-hyeok when he made his clumsy confession of love and, rather than go home and cry about it, he instead went to a gay bar, got shitfaced, and had an epiphany that he didn't have to be another kind of gay stereotype: Emotionally tortured, alone, and isolated.
The baby faced ex boxer Yang Ki-beom (Yoo Ah-In) soon joins the cake shop, Antique, as a cake obsessed trainee patisserie, under the watchful eye of Min Seon-woo. While he initially presents as a cheeky, greedy, brat it becomes apparent, following a confrontation with a customer, that he too has secrets he would rather not talk about.
While the overall mood of Antique Bakery is often as light as the patisserie, verging on camp at times, it does - as I've already hinted - have a series of darker undertones. Central to this is an unfolding crime story that at first seems to have little to do with the antics at Antique but which, in the end, becomes firmly entwined with that establishment and its staff.
We know that there is something lurking in Jin-hyeok's past that he clearly needs to deal with, and we know that it is tied up in some way with the constant presence of the fourth member of staff at Antique: Nam Su-yeong (Choi Ji-ho), a clumsy young man and supposed childhood friend of Jin-hyeok, who also appears to serve as his bodyguard. But who, or what, is being protected? And from whom?
While it has been said that the plot doesn't quite work, I'd say instead that this is a film that needs to be watched more than once. Not only will it make more sense on the second viewing but you will also take different things from it, and notice different things. For this is a film that improves with repeated viewing.
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