By Emily Jisoo Bowles
공주병 (gong-ju byeong) princess syndrome is a term used to denigrate a woman perceived to be narcissistic and spoilt, so ridiculous that she would imagine herself a princess and expect everyone to wait on her beck and call. As a child I would shudder every time I heard the phrase, terrified that I had spoken too loudly or gotten caught looking in the mirror too long lest I be diagnosed. If only I had watched A Princess’ One-sided Love (1967), wherein the titular princess’ affliction with the terrible ailment is in fact what allows her to escape her fate of servitude and misery for one of love and (relative) freedom.
Set in the middle of the Joseon era, the princess Suk-gyeong (a real historical figure from the 17th Century) is the youngest of six daughters, the eldest five all having left the palace to wed mediocre court officials. The princess is determined not to follow in the footsteps of her sisters, proudly announcing that she shall never marry, or rather more radically, that she shall choose her own husband. On this fateful day, she encounters a young scholar named Kim Seon-do and love blooms at first sight. What follows is a playfully wild romp involving cross-dressing and breaking all the rules of polite society, as the princess escapes her gilded cage to explore the dangers and possibilities of life beyond the palace.
The second film by Choi Eun-hee, South Korea’s third-ever female director, A Princess’ One-sided Love is similarly critical of arranged marriage and the obscene levels of obedience demanded from women in Korean society as Choi’s first film The Girl Raised as a Future Daughter-in-Law (1965). ‘고추 당추 맵다 해도 시집살이 더 맵더라!’ ‘They say chilli peppers are spicy but married life is even spicier!’ proclaims one of Suk-gyeong’s sisters, a line from a song that also appears in Choi’s first feature. Released in 1967 in a rapidly modernising South Korea, the film touches on the tensions between the disruption and preservation of tradition, depicting a modern woman who knows what she wants having to navigate ludicrous, outdated laws (princesses were not allowed to leave the palace or interact with commoners). By situating the story nearly three centuries ago, Choi slyly critiques gender and class structures that have changed in name but not in nature whilst also evading the censorship of the Park Chung-hee regime.
On the surface, a black-and-white court melodrama about forbidden love would not have been my first pick for a Friday night. Luckily, Choi brings lightness and humour to what could have easily been dull and heavy-handed. Wandering about the city with no sense of direction, the princess finds herself in a high-class brothel, where she is mistaken for a 기생 (gisaeng) courtesan by a gaggle of court officials who expect her to be meekly deferential in the face of their status. Instead, she gleefully insults each one with scathing court gossip, her irreverence exposing the farce of institutions and absurdity of hierarchy. Nam Jeong-im’s incredibly charismatic performance is what makes her takedowns so delicious; at times she’s coquettish and uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants, but equally she doesn’t give a fuck, romping about 한양 (Hanyang) old Seoul without a care in the world.
In lesser hands, the princess could have been foolish and naive, a cautionary tale against stepping out of bounds, but Choi portrays her with empathy. Suk-gyeong is clever but not cunning in her quest to get what she wants, a world away from the evil women in other Korean films of the era such as The Housemaid (1961) who seduce and use men. Whilst those depictions reflected male anxieties around the increasing socioeconomic power of women at the time, A Princess’ One-sided Love takes a distinctly female perspective on power structures, showing how women use wit and sly defiance to overcome barriers. Like Nam Jeong-im, Choi Eun-hee herself was also a prolific actress, although she is best known in the West for being kidnapped to North Korea and forced to make films with her ex-husband Shin Sang-ok. Perhaps Choi navigated adversity in her life in a similar way to the princess, indirectly undermining the gaze of men in a male-dominated industry and asserting herself as a director in her own right.
I was hesitant at first how much of a queer reading I could do of the film, considering it never veers into explicitly queer territory. The story for A Princess’ One-side Love was inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, wherein a female character masquerades as a man and pursues a male love interest (only men could be professional actors in Shakespearean times, adding another layer of ambiguity). Even though both works inevitably conclude with heterosexual fulfilment, there does remain undeniable queerness in the moments of deception and dress-up. When the princess Suk-gyeong in male clothing meets Kim Seon-do, the pair shyly proclaim their great admiration for each other in poetic ways that are slightly hard not to read as gay. ‘I am flattered that you would take a poor student like me to be your friend’, Kim Seon-do tells the princess who he thinks is a man, except he doesn’t say friend, he says 백년지기 (百年知己), a soulmate, a century-long companion. Chill, y’all just met!
Also featuring deep brotherly love with homoerotic tones is The Love Eterne (1963), the Chinese opera film that screened at last year’s edition of the festival. In a reverse-Shakespearean move, both the noble woman who dresses up as a man to pursue her education and the man she falls in love with are played by female actors. The film portrays cross-dressing as a means to an end that can coexist with Confucian values: it allows an exceptionally intelligent woman to attend university, while her end goal remains to become a dutiful wife. Although the casting in A Princess’ One-sided Love is more straightforward (no bending here), the princess’ reasons for cross-dressing are decidedly anti-Confucian. In her first transgression of hierarchy, she dresses as a servant girl to leave the palace – not out of necessity or a desire to study, but rather because she’s bored with her assigned role of obedient, decorative trophy and she wants some excitement in her life. When she adorns male drag, it’s a split-second decision of survival to help her escape from the brothel. In both of her costume changes, she doesn’t try to embody how she thinks a servant girl or a man acts. What’s radical about princess Suk-gyeong is her lack of understanding or care about the class and gender systems so deeply embedded into society, which in turn reveals their mutable and subversive qualities.
At the end of the film, the princess is stripped of her title and becomes just Suk-gyeong. The love that was supposed to remain one-sided can finally become requited and the lovers embrace each other as equals. Despite the satisfactorily neat wrap-up, I can’t help but wonder what their married life would be like beyond the immediacy of the happy ending. She might not be a princess anymore, but I doubt she can be so easily cured of her princess syndrome.