Several writers wrestled with the adaptation of Song Chaehwan’s story about 10 women staging a rooftop protest, but rumour has it that the project came into focus only when Jang Jin rewrote the script. The women went to the rescue of a battered wife and accidentally killed the violent husband; now they are resisting arrest by barricading themselves on the roof of Rose Apartments – and winning support from women all over Korea, thanks to a woman journalist’s sympathetic reports. Meanwhile there’s an unrelenting heatwave, and two male burglars are trapped in one of the evacuated apartments below. This was one of the films that announced new attitudes and themes in the culture of the newly democratised Korea, and its feminist vehemence, wit and sexual politics are no less startling now than they were then.
