The superhit "Friends" tapped a vein of nostalgia in South Korea
Korean director Jang Sun Woo has never been one to shy away from sex and violenceor worry about what the censors might think. In Petal, he restaged the 1980 Kwangju massacre, when Korean soldiers killed or wounded thousands of protesters. His 1994 To You From Me shocked audiences with its explicit sexual themesand the main character's obsession with her own derriere. Last year he had Korea's censors in conniptions with Lies, an S&M whipfest that begins with a kinky sculptor deflowering a schoolgirl. Lies was in-your-face auteur cinema at its rawestthe censors took the scissors to it, the art-house crowd loved...
