Cannes week one: Love, romance and lots of horror
Things took a turn for the bloody -- slurp slurp bloody -- in Thirst, from Korean director Park Chan-wook, in a slightly more playful mood than he was in Oldboy, his previous revenge fantasy. Thirst represents yet another reinvention of the vampire film, this one both beautiful and provocative: it's about a priest who becomes a blood-eater who avoids killing when possible, preferring to sup from the body of a man in a coma. He falls in love with a beautiful woman who turns out to be a lot of trouble. People fly through the air, bite necks, and have a good deal of intercourse: Cannes' ratio of sex to violence keeps tipping this way and that, with violence gaining the upper hand as things move along.
