필름 누아르? 필름 블랑크!

Film Noir? Film Blanc!: 'Thirst'(2009) by Park Chan Wook

This study's aim is to analyse <Thirst>(2009) by Chan Wook Park, who has drawed worldwide attention with the film <Oldboy>(2003). The previous studies on Park's works are focused on theme-analyse, so good and evil, desire and celibacy, and guilty conscience. But the film forms, namely filmic apparatuses, that make this themes on his works apparent, have been neglected by the film studies. In other words, there is no attempt to analyse concrete images and frames or mise-en-scène, that realize those characteristic themes by Park. The theme-biased study on Park's works ist not an exception for <Thirst>, a story of 'vampire of violent passions', that portrays the equal question on original sin and rescue of human. Therefore, this study attempts to approach Park's film from the perspective of style and visual analyse. The keyword is here 'film blanc', that Thomas Elsaesser suggested as an extension of the term 'film noir'. Because <Thirst> performs the specific theme of acute conflict between releasing of desire and self-repressing with the surrealistic white (also 'blanc') images and mise-en-scène. So, this work tries to develop the concept of 'film blanc' and to apply it to analysing the form by <Thirst>. This will offer proof, that the term 'film blanc' is effective to represent the theme of film, thus corruption of human being and absence of soul.