In the second tier waterlogged Argento film Trauma (1993), a character stares at a print of John Everett Millais's 'Ophelia' (1852), and he seemingly stumbles over a clue. His vision is blurred from crying, and in a reflection in the glass he spies a stranger in black with a snake bracelet whom he mistakes for someone else. Young-hyun Chang uses this Argento sequence as his stepping off point to explore the blurred relationship between art and reality in 'Tell Me Something' (1999) aka Telmisseomding. A cloud hangs over the head of Lieutenant Cho, and how he paid for his mothers' medical expenses. "Why would Park pay an 85 million won bill for a detective trying to arrest him?" is the question an internal affairs investigator asks Cho. Although the question of being guilty of taking a bribe is not resolved, he does say to a colleague (Detective Oh) in one scene "I still don't know if I did the right thing." To which Oh replies "I'm sure you didn't want to go like that, but a decision had to be made."A key scene with seeing, watching, and different ways of being seen involves the questioning of Suyeon Chae. Through various devices such as telemonitors, and shots through internal windows, we see him looking at her, his partner looking at her, and her looking at a video, looking at pictures, and we know that she knows. She knows things.In a nod to 'Giallo' pulp fiction origins, Miss Chae after being installed in the Lieutenants house, finds a note; 'Call me if you need anything. There's a gun in the drawer.' In a neat piece of montage, we are lulled by a waltz as the Lieutenant shows Miss Chae how to use the gun, which is quickly followed by a sequence of mayhem on a freeway as a truck runs over one of the seemingly ubiquitous black garbage bags of body parts that are being dumped around the city.Miss Chae's friend Seungmin is a medical intern who seems like the most likely candidate from the get go; you know her cheery countenance is guilty. She wears white all the time, knows how to use a scalpel. Seungmin has long hair Chae short, Chae is artistic Seungmin scientific. And let's not forget this is influenced by Dario Argento who likes to have an alternate killer in the background.An okay waterlogged thriller whose opening credits features a painting reminiscent of Rembrandt's 'The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp' (1632), which sets up Argento's fresco concern. In the first visit to Miss Chae's house we see a postcard sized reproduction to John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia' (1852), used similarly in Argento's 'Trauma' and 'The Stendahl Syndrome'. Later, in Miss Chae's country family house, there is a painting depicting her as 'Ophelia' from the Millais, painted by her father.Argento like mise-en-scene can be found in an economically executed sequence in a crowded elevator, and another garbage bag full of body parts. The exterior of Miss Chae's fathers house is reminiscent of the empty house in Deep Red. Instead of the children's scrawl on the wall, we get a montage of photos of Miss Chae and a reproduction of the Rembrandt picture. Ultimately though, the idea of scopophilia, being sexual pleasure from looking… gazing, is how Argento seeps through this work. Worth a look.

Serious spoilers ahead !This is a very well-made thriller. After first watching, it seemed not to make any sense at all to me, and I got quite angry at it. But then, I went back to it, and patiently went through some of the scenes again to catch the detailed hints. Man, it sure isn't easy to figure them out ! Hollywood thrillers are very in your face with plot hints. This one is far more subtle, and the viewers have to really catch the details themselves.Since there are many negative comments here because of the impenetrable plot twists, I will list what I found out so far (it's really more of a puzzle than a straightforward thriller, think "The usual suspects"):At the beginning of the film, the detective removes a button from the dead body of a boy who fell out of a window; the other one is missing. The missing button is the one he sees Chae put into the drawer in the video towards the end of the movie. When he gets into the room 702 where the victims were dissected, he imagines how she pushed the boy off the window. She does it because the boy had been spying on her. Without this link, the detective wouldn't know Chae was in that place, so it is crucial.On the photo, there are the two women, Chae and Seungmin Oh, together will all the male victims, each holding a bottle with fish, similar to the one that Chae gave to the detective before she left for Paris towards the end. They are standing in front of a water tank. When the detective first went to the home in the woods where Chae was hiding after being attacked, this tank was briefly shown. It was not recognizable as such, but the metal corners were standing out. The detective remembered it from the photo.The tools that were packed and removed from the room 702 where the detective's partner was killed were found in Seungmin Oh's apartment by the police (before the scene at Tower records). Therefore, she was the one who killed him.The body missing the head inside the tank is Chae's father's. His head was in the freezer that the detective's partner found just before he was killed. Over the phone, he informed the detective that the head was Chae's father's. His killer (Seungmin Oh) removed the head from the freezer before leaving. This implies that both women were using the room 702 for the killings. They were partners in those crimes. Seungmin Oh has burn scars on her legs (shown before she leaves for Tower records). She is Chae's childhood friend who set the house on fire. Chae was lying when she said that friend was a boy, in order to cover up Seungmin Oh (her partner in crime).The men were all former boyfriends of Chae, according to what she said. However, they are shown united on the photo, together with Chae and Seungmin Oh. They are standing in front of the tank that contains Chae's father's dead body, in celebrating pose. This implies they must all have been complicit in killing him. Her father was the first victim, and contrary to the others, his body was kept hidden. From the way he was portrayed, the former boyfriends must have had reason to hate him; also, she must have manipulated them in wanting to murder her father.The plastic bag that led back to her father was placed to make her father the main suspect for the killing of the young men. Presumably the two women killed them in order to stain Chae's father's reputation (he is a very famous artist). Things went wrong with this plan when the detective's partner discovered her father's head in the freezer just before he was killed, and informed the detective about it. Knowing that her father was dead, he wasn't a suspect any longer for the police. This was the point where Seungmin Oh understood that their plan was unraveling.The person in the car who was attacking the detective in the rainy night, after he finds one of the victim's place, is Seungmin Oh. The police (towards the end) identify her as the owner of a car that was caught speeding on that night.Seungmin Oh knows that the police has tracked her down, after seeing them at her workplace. To draw attention away from Chae, she spills the blood in the bathtub, and makes it evident that she is the murderer. She still wants to cover Chae.Chae's call to the detective telling him she will meet Senguin at Tower records is a setup. She says "just because I was thinking of you", which is not typical for her. He was supposed to kill Seungmin, this was the plan of both women.There is an enigmatic short scene 30 min before the end where Chae and Seungmin Oh meet for dinner, together with some young men (just after the killing of the detective's partner). Seungmin asks Chae "Did you really go to the hospital to die ? You are not the suicidal type." It looks rather like a memory, and the men present at the dinner might have been the victims. It might imply that the women were ready for suicide, but that Chae wanted out, and that Seungmin was ready to take the blame, in order to give her an alibi.All in all, it started to make sense to me after moving through the film back and forth on my ipad. This is the first time I had to do this to understand a movie. While it was frustrating at the beginning, this is all looking a lot more interesting now.Finally, the original title is "Telmisseomding", and was translated to "Tell me something". Much rather, it might mean "They'll miss something".

When the pieces of bodies begin to be found around the city in cars and in plastic bags, a cop with money problems is put in charge of the case. It soon becomes clear that the parts found are from different people and that the killer seems to be mixing and matching leading to the unhappy conclusion that more victims are in the offing. As the investigation progresses it becomes clear that all of the victims seem to have been ex-lovers of one girl. As the detective interviews the girl, and asks her to "tell me something..." her story begins to emerge... I had heard good thing about this film and was looking forward to seeing it since I had read it was a good thriller. On a lot of levels it is quite good with some great sequences and some good performances, but at 2 hours the film seems to drift to nowhere or perhaps heading to a conclusion that is the guessed at the outset. Twists and turns aside (some of which didn't make a great deal of sense to me) I had a really good idea who was behind it at the start. While I like a good number of the films "set pieces" for lack of a better word, I didn't find it all that special. Worth a look see for those who love thrillers for the good piece

really,closer to an 8/10. this movie was well-acted,skillfully shot,and attractive without having that disgustingly fake,over-polished look that everyone seems to use now. and it Does make sense,if referring to the progression of clues and false leads and how the movie ends. the things that were definite drawbacks and did Not make sense were more mundane; the cops have a very laissez-faire attitude towards their guns(and even More annoying,each time it's an obvious Portent Of Doom :P ),those dippy cops also missed a handful of important and somewhat obvious clues at first glance(even second and third glance). it's disheartening how many ppl apparently got lost in the 'mystery' part of this psychological thriller/murder-mystery. as long as you pay attention the whole way through,the whole set-up pans out rather well and i thought the effort put into Both the idea and the execution of it was admirable. not perfect,but being coerced into a little analysis-in-the-midst is always nice.