The Gay Love That Disappears In The Smoke

A short film often speaks a million words that very long ones don’t. It’s as if making shorts is the only ethical choice you can make as a filmmaker. But gay stories deserve both long and short.

Compared to Thailand or the West, Korea has very few full-feature-length queer films. The gay Korean characters on screen are always living on borrowed time. And they know how to make the most of it.

A short gives you clues of what wasn’t shown, everything that was left unsaid. Often it comes in the form of a twist; often the rest of the story is just left to you to interpret. You can create the rest of the story in a fraction of a second in your mind when it’s over.

A feature closes the narrative for you, without much space for alternative imaginations. And gay shorts are always complete stories of their own, no matter how badly they are told.

Korea’s Confucian heteropatriarchy queerbaits the entire world with bodies of young boys. It knows quite well that a twink body sells like hotcakes. So it sells BTS, TXT, Seventeen, and Stray Kids. But it isn’t interested in queer rights.

The heavily and grossly underfunded gay short films are the only ones offering a way out. And today, it happens to be Smoke (2019).

Love Starts When You are a Teenager

High school romance has been a popular genre for a good while now. In upper Asia (as I like to refer to it, in contrast to South Asia, its much more conservative sibling), which simply is Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand, and China, everyone cherishes it.

And boys try out their first love adventures during high school. The average South Asian does exactly the same, except they aren’t expected to ‘go astray’ at such a young age. They are meant to study hard and achieve admirable things. The upper Asian kids are much more allowed to be spoiled brats as a group. Some of them become K-pop stars, too.

Those things just aren’t offered as options to the average South Asian kid. Their life trajectories are different, without any dreams of pop music. Their countries are often famous for child organ trafficking, but aren’t ready to commodify their bodies that way, either.

In that sense, being a Thai, Korean, or Taiwanese kid is a blessing. And all of it really starts at the high school’s backyard, where boys gather to try out their first cigarette.

And this is where the story of Smoke takes place.

The Realism

Smoke is a devotedly realistic film—without straying for a minute. It sort of makes it evident that the director is a student of all the classic films.

Many will not find it entertaining. But it doesn’t empty out the beauty—which is a rare case for realism. When it does have two male protagonists, a bridge exists as the third—which almost looks like a gate to the inferno, a mystery, and a dozen more things when appearing.

And half the story takes place on this bridge, under the canopy of its steel-hard body. Here, lovers estrange themselves because one of them is not ready to love, has no courage to love a boy, and cares more about showing his face to the class.

The story is just as simplistic: two boys trying to love each other, others jeering at them, some tailing them secretly to know what they are up to, plus shaming them for being ‘girly’.

It does leave the high schoolers’ secret smoking zone open to interpretation as well. Is it a symbol of teenage boy culture, where everyone is expected to fantasize about girls, and not having a girlfriend is seen as a lack of manhood?

Since Jun Seok ‘acts like a girl’, his reaching there evokes the same reactions. One wonders if he smokes—in other words, whether he is man enough to smoke a cigarette.

He starts coughing after the first puff and tries to smoke from Jung Hyun’s mouth. It is the first attempted kiss. The second one is interrupted by a knock at the door. Both are alerted and try to ensure they are safe—forgetting to kiss all over again.

In the end, they never kiss or love each other.

The Cinematography

In a nutshell, it is a story of hesitation experienced by so many young gays. They hesitate to come out and lock themselves up in the closet.

What makes it special is the cinematography. The close-up on Jung Hyun’s face when he says, ‘guys are talking about us’. Every frame that follows conveys the emotions of both him and Jun Seok. And it is a breathtaking watch.

But it is also a film about a bridge. It is incomplete without it. Setting the same scenes in a different location, such as the staircases of the high school, would have turned it into something else entirely than what it is.

This artistic signature, without any background music except the last scene, is what makes it so great.

Otherwise, it is a common story of hesitation that has killed so many gay loves for ages.

Cast ‘n Crew

A reviewer on MyDramaList calls it “a fable about the pointlessness of conforming at all costs”. And the words ring so true!

Smoke’s director is Park Haneol. Its Korean title is 연기 (Yeongi/Performance). Song Deok Ho and Yoo Jang Hee portrayed the two protagonists. Both look almost the same in the opening scene, at least until the eyes of the audience adjust and start recognizing their faces apart.

So many things can be said about it. And it said a lot without saying much, just as well—just like every other short film that ever dreamed of becoming an artistic masterpiece.

For the ordinary audience, it might look like just a gloomy film. But the impression is going to be totally different for art film lovers.

As for the gay artists and romantics from lower Asia, it will probably leave a way more intense mark, because that segment of the audience consists of gay people whose love stories almost never came true.

But their upper Asian counterparts did not succeed very greatly, either. Smoke is a piece of evidence, which is every bit worth watching.