The offbeat mystery begins with a detective interviewing the woman who lives in apartment 301. It seems that 301's neighbor in apt. 302 went missing and the last time 302 was seen was with her. What unfolds is the story of two women with their own distinct obsessions concerning food. Recent divorcee, 301 is a cook who keeps meticulous food diaries and makes the the large modern kitchen and clean dining area the focus of her entire apartment. 302 is a mousy, depressive, and anorexic author who cannot eat anything. Naturally, this leads to the collision of the two worlds, with 301 making it her goal to find something her psychologically afflicted neighbor can keep down.

As told through flashbacks, we get to know 301 and 302, their pasts, and how they became involved with each other. 301's marriage dissolved under her strain to always deliver the perfect meal, leading to a bored eventually unfaithful husband, 301 packing on the pounds, and finally her serving up his beloved dog as dinner. 302's past involves a sexually abused childhood, connecting that and other tragedies to her fathers job as a butcher, resulting in her food and sex fearing adulthood.

This tale of culinary hang ups begins with 302 having disappeared. With that little bit of information, along with the films off kilter tone, penchant for close-ups of meat being butchered, and 301's curious chef fetish, it doesn't take too long to add up just what happened to 302. Despite the cannibalistic tendencies, the tone is not horrific and the film is more a dark comedy/drama. Director Chul-Sool Park does a great job with what is essentially a two person film. The unreal head space and characters pathology isn't entirely convincing, but the film is done with enough stylistic flourish to keep it entertaining.

The DVD: Koch Entertainment

Picture: Fullscreen. Well, I tried tracking down info on the source. The Korean DVD of the film is in fullscreen too, though the director's website has more widescreen looking screencaps (which could just be a webpage aesthetic choice). The bottom line really boils down, that even if it was intended to be a 4X3 image (which I doubt), the print used here is very ugly. I realize securing foreign film source prints can be a pain, but Koch Lorber is one of those companies with a pretty lacking record. Though there didn't appear to be any pan and scan issues, if this wasn't tape/vhs sourced,...well if this is the state of 301/302's prints, I hate to think how this ten year old film will look in another ten years.

So, what you get is an image with lots of grain, lines on the print, wobble, and some color bleeding. You'll swear you are watching a vhs dub.

Sound: 5.1 Surround or 2.0 Stereo, Korean language with optional English subtitles. Again, the source is fairly unimpressive and has some issues. The audio is weak and low mixed. The "surround" just seems to double the stereo track into some back speakers; there wasn't any atmospheric or score surround mixing.

Extras: Koch Lorber release trailers.

Conclusion: This is an okay film and if the premise intrigues you, it is certainly worth a viewing. However, the quality of the transfer just isn't that great. No significant extras, lackluster audio/video, plus a high retail price? No thanks.