Unidentified: absurdism reigns in a UFO-plagued Seoul
Jude Chun’s debut feature, which literalises the concept of alienation to ask questions about modern society, gets an A for ambition – and though its narrative is unfocused, its pacing and humour work in its favour.
- Reviewed from the 2023 International Film Festival Rotterdam
Set mostly in present-day Seoul, Unidentified offers an intriguing premise: what if it were a given that extraterrestrials arrived on Earth in the year 1993 and are likely living among us? With UFOs in the form of massive black balls hovering over every major city in the world, director Jude Chun structures his debut feature as a series of vaguely interrelated absurdist vignettes with occasionally recurring characters.
Three probable aliens cloaked in human form engage in a hilariously stilted dialogue in a café. A dreadlocked young protester afflicted with a stutter holds up hand-painted signs questioning the aliens’ actual existence. A group of volunteers cleaning up after an outdoor celebration commemorating 20 years of the Korean peninsula’s reunification – yet another ‘What if?’, referred to only obliquely here – suddenly breaks out into song. A tarot card reader gives her customers ridiculous advice. Two colleagues working a boring office job collaborate on an impromptu musical composition by clicking on the arrow keys of their laptops. A cult worships the aliens through shamanic dance rituals. Documentary-style interviews are conducted by people from all over the world who believe they themselves might be aliens because of the content of their dreams…
What exactly is going on here? It’s not hard to imagine most viewers asking themselves such a question. With a loose and playful style that alternately recalls Slacker-era Richard Linklater and the Yorgos Lanthimos of The Lobster (2015), Unidentified doesn’t always cohere on the level of narrative – for instance, why is it that seemingly no one can access the UFOs, despite their proximity? But narrative coherence does not appear to interest Chun. Instead, Unidentified seeks to paste metaphorical scenes of alienation into a composite speculative fiction of existential angst and unease. In doing so, it obliquely asks whether a sense of communal belonging is possible in a society rife with distractions and inequalities such as ours, suggesting that, in our fragmented societal state, we might as well be aliens ourselves.
In its brave attempts to tackle big ideas, Unidentified gets an A for ambition; furthermore, its pacing and humour work to offset whatever longings the viewer might have for more in the way of traditional character development and narrative arc. But as someone who happens to love films that are more intent on interrogating the viewer than giving answers, I was left with one particularly nagging question: what kind of film would Chun make if he ditched the ensemble and focused on the plights of two or three characters? Perhaps his next film will be a little more focused.