Two men look as if they are bored to death in a rancid, sweltering hotel room. They read Dostoevsky and film with a video camera. But they have a reason to be there. An unpredictable and excellent character study and a tragic political thriller.
The independent Korean feature Spying Cam is above all an intriguing character study, or rather, an investigation into what happens when you put two diverse and conflicting characters together in a sweltering, bare hotel room and don't let them out again. Of the two, the eldest is about thirty, macho, dominant, tending towards violence and armed with a pistol and a mobile phone. The other, in his early twenties, is well educated, even intellectual, and clearly the subservient of the two. As main attribute, he has Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment with him (that becomes a source of a very educational role-playing game) and the Sony video camera from the title. Apart from that, the two of them kill time by watching amorous developments in the room next door through a hole in the wall. The maid and the inhabitants of the room next door assume the two men are gay but in reality one is a policeman and the other a student who is being 'protected'. The two, brilliantly played by two unknown actors, are waiting for instructions that have to come via the mobile phone. Things only change when winter comes. The ending, which we cannot reveal here, puts what went before in a surprising and worrisome political light. The apparent friendliness and the inevitability with which fate unfolds is terrifying. (GT)