A Frozen Flower (2008)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

I found this movie accidentally which also led me to start watching several South Korean soap operas later.I want to explain why the director employed such intensive sexually explicit scenes in the movie. One reason might be sex is the most powerful and primitive human behavior which would carry out the subsequently tragic endings. All to be said and done, this movie gave me such reflections which I felt the story couldn't be better. The struggling between conscious and desires is forceful enough to overwhelm audience's mind. The scenes and customs were also splendid in details. One thing I would like to point out is I watched both English and Chinese subtitles of this movie. Not to mention that Chinese version is way better. I think the language barrier can affect how you see the movie. The culture difference between east and west also have impacts.It is loosely based on history. The plot was unexpected and mind blowing. Some reviews criticized the young actor who played the guard was not veteran enough. I would differ over that because the director tried to show the young man's first love which would be longing, obsessed and addicted. The affection between the guard and queen was growing from lust to love. If you can imagine the society at that time which the two lovers only could express their affections privately, you will understand why the director used extensive sexual contents in this movie. However, the third part of their mating was excessive and unnecessary which only served for box office ticket sale.If you like those eastern historian movies, you probably should understand the society some. Then you will see the movies in different way.

I didn't think that a film about a homosexual king persuading his lover to sleep with the Queen to produce an heir would be very exciting. But as so often happens, it was. I've watched this twice now, and appreciated the film a lot more the second time around.The lead characters are well drawn, the dialog is interesting, the acting is excellent - heck, I even liked the music. There's not an over-abundance of battle and fight scenes, but what scenes there were were well -staged, and I thought the final scenes were as good as anything I've seen.And, of course, there's sex - lots of bare-bottomed bare-breasted, tongue in tongue, man on man, man on woman sex. But none of it descends into sleaziness and perhaps because Ji-hyo Song is such a beautiful woman (and, dare I say it, In-seong Jo is such a beautiful man) the scenes don't become tedious as they do in so many other other movies. The scenes are completely integral to the movie. Funnily enough, I've always thought of the French as being the only ones capable pf handling sex in cinema properly. The Germans and Spanish and Australians always tend towards crudity, the Americans invariably imbue their sex scenes with their childish puritanism, and sex in Asian cinema can be downright ludicrous. But having said that, the most erotic and interesting sex scenes I've seen have all been in Asian movies - "Samsara", "Erotic Ghost Story", "A Frozen Flower".I really like this film - it gets a 9/10 from me.

This film should have been a whole lot more engaging for my money. The film starts out as an epic sword fighting--die to protect the king--like saga (you see these boys being groomed to be the king's bodyguards and warriors when they grow up--kind of like a school for boy secret service agents actually.) where the "die for the king" like mantra is tried and true. This mantra gets severely tested later on in the film when the king starts going off his rocker--but we;ll get to that in a second. The king starts taking to this one particular warrior (a more "sensitive" kind) and appoints him his own personal bodyguard. Before too long--the 2 men are in a secretive affair. The king however decides to get married to a woman--got to protect the throne of course. eventually the king decides that he needs to produce and heir to protect the throne---however the king is having some sexual issues in bed with his wife (possibly because he secretly pines for his bodyguard when he's in bed with her.) He then gets the bright idea of having his lover/bodyguard to impregnate his wife on his behalf. The bodyguard who has probably never said No to the king in his entire life of course agrees to it--and before too long--the bodyguard and the queen are engaging in a secretive affair all their own. (yes i realize the affair can't be that secretive if the king hired him to impregnate the queen in the first place--but the queen and the bodyguard end up meeting behind closed doors in non officially sanctioned romance sessions as well)The King Then loses His mind with jealousy basically. I kept wondering who he was jealous of at first. Was he jealous of The Bodyguard or his wife? Turns out Both! That's more or less it for the plot---there's a king or queen or some kind of royalty at another kingdom who's plotting to take the king down and those attempts are the basis for some very well done attacks on the king's throne that the bodyguard (and other warriors as well) must fight off...but the main plot line seems to be all about the increasing jealousy of the king for his lover and for his wife. While i wish there was more of a competing plot line to go with here because this plot line while filled with good old fashioned drama--and dressed up in an old fashioned royalty costumed drama as well is kind of a bore after a while. I personally really relished the attacks by the other kingdom if only because it distracted me from the ultimate predictability of what was about to happen (although i will admit the actual ending was pretty darn good--when the inevitable happens and the king finally has a reason to justify his jealousy--his actions finally make the film suspenseful...not to mention squirm inducing as well--that's all i'll say about that--i leave what happens to the king and bodyguard to you fine folks to see--but it ain't pretty.) Film has gorgeous set design and costumes and lighting and plush scenery that really pops on camera--the whole works were done as is traditional for a costume royalty drama genre piece...and that's all well and good--but if the heart of the story doesn't grab you and keep you interested the whole way through, then its all for naught.

A Frozen Flower got billed here as "The Year's Sexiest Blockbuster", and writer-director Ha Yu's movie could probably be also billed as an equivalent to Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, given its period setting and schemes within a royal household, plenty of gorgeous costumes, opulent production sets, with a tinge of wire-fu martial arts and a chock load of mixed romances thrown in for good measure too.Set in the Korean Koryo era where it's under the control of the Mongol's Yuan Dynasty, the current gay Koryo King (Joo Jin Mo) sets up his own elite bodyguard troops, recruiting 36 young boys to undergo extreme training and eliciting pledges of unfettered loyalty from this group of trusted men. Amongst all he favours Hong Lim (Jo In Sung), and spent plenty of personal and quality time with his pet, from the open plains hunting to the courtyards training, right down to the games both play in the royal bedroom. Nepotism runs in the royal household, since it's an open secret as to why the King appoints Lim as chief of his bodyguards, undoubtedly also because of the advantage of up close and personal already from within the royal chambers.The male-centric world soon got shaken by the introduction of the Yuan princess to be Queen (Song Ji Hyo) in an alliance forged by marriage, and I guess you can see how this third party could cause severe problems. Pressure mounts when the royal family is expected to bear an heir, otherwise a successor to the throne will be appointed. This displeases the King of course, given someone on the outside waiting in the wings for his demise, but then his sexual preference also meant that he can't get it up. So in desperation, he crafts a crazy plan in over to hang onto power, and that's to order his lover Hong, to impregnate the Queen and produce an heir whom he will accept as his own, thereby protecting his throne. The Queen reluctantly agrees of course, but as a woman who accepted to be loyal to the kingdom, she's got to do what is best for her husband. As for Hong, well, it's duty toward both King and Country.What this does is in fact to push both the Queen and Hong into an uncontrollable sexual awakening, which the rest of the film pretty much centres upon, dealing in relationships, and the vast emotions that come along with it, including the negative ones like jealously and ultimately, rage and hatred. While at first Hong couldn't get himself to betray his first love, I guess it probably is easier for any guy to treat sex as sex without an emotional baggage, though it did tickle Hong's heart that perhaps the female of the species was more interesting, and his breakaway from a male-centric relationship, was seen as a betrayal and treason to the King.As for the Queen, the power of fleshly pleasures from this perverse consummation of a marriage, sees to it that she gains some strength in taking over some control in her restricted life, and plots to seduce Hong even more so that she could satisfy her lust, which for both parties, transform into a healthy heterosexual relationship in which the King obviously despises. I suspect there will be some quarters cheering the film in depicting that homosexuality can be cured by a good dose of sex to open their minds, but I thought it was more of a matter of choice and opportunity being presented here, since the sexual preference get contrasted between Hong and the King's is quite clear – one's obviously following the heart, the other his orders, which slowly developed into silent insubordination, before the heart fully takes over. In any case this romantic triangle will push and probe when you're viewing this, as there are plenty of insights to gain from if you were to put yourself into the shoes of either party, and determine how you would react to the sequence of lustful events.The film of course goes beyond love and lust issues, although Hong and the Queen go at each other like jackrabbits. There's also a subplot involving the usual political intrigue (having the film set in a period setting and not dwelling on this seems wasted), with political assassinations bringing about some major set action sequences. I felt it would have probably benefited audiences with no clue about the Yuan dynasty control over Korea at the time if this was given a little more focus, but I suppose it's left to further reading on our own. Or had a bit more about the bodyguard unit because they were being utilized for a lot more activities like counter-espionage rather than just plain protection purposes.This being Singapore, you'll get to see the more explicit heterosexual scenes between the bisexual and the straight woman quite intact, though the only (at least the only one that made it) homosexual one was butchered for the most parts. Those who prefer their films intact could go opt for the DVD instead, as the Koreans have already released this, which includes a limited, unrated 2-disc edition.