The Road to the Racetrack

Jang Sun-Woo (1993): 'The key difference between Woomuk-Baemi and Racetrack is the social level of the main characters. The central couple in Racetrack may have working-class roots, but they are privileged and well-educated. They have studied abroad and come home. What do they now make of Korea?'R has spent nearly six years studying in Paris, more than three of them screwing fellow-student J. Now he's back in Korea, ready to abandon his wife and child, and eager to pick up with J where they left off. But J (who has begun to make it as a literary critic after plagiarising one of R's essays) is reluctant and frustratingly elusive. Jang's masterly film charts a very contemporary relationship (at once unique and indistinguishable from thousands of others) which goes round in circles. Like the characters, the film searches for logic and order in a world in which both are missing in action. Tony Rayns