Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson November 23, 2023

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000) is Hong Sang-soo's first black-and-white film and also his first to incorporate a bifurcated narrative. The story revolves around a love triangle featuring 37-year-old Young-soo (Moon Sung-keun), a producer at a television production company, Soo-jung (Lee Eun-ju), Young-soo's 24-year-old assistant and scriptwriter, and 35-year-old Jae-hoon (Jeong Bo-seok), Young-soo's former classmate who's now an art gallery owner/dealer. The movie is demarcated into five segments, which are subdivided into chapter numbers. The first half is told from Jae-hoon's perspective. The second half shifts to Soo-jung's point of view and her version of the same events.

Young-soo brings along Soo-jung to meet Jae-hoon at the gallery. He is hoping that Jae-hoon will help to finance an independent film. Jae-hoon becomes very attracted to Soo-jung and wants to start a serious relationship with her, as he proclaims over dinner. Hong shows a somewhat chance meeting at Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul where Jae-hoon misplaced his gloves on a bench where Soo-jung found them. (This is given a completely different spin when Soo-jung recounts her version.) There's also the would-be love story with the producer. Young-soo is married with kids but he's also physically attracted to Soo-jung, especially when they're along together in the editing room.

Jeong Bo-seok gives an outstanding performance as a well-off man who's romantically lonely and has an addictive personality. Jae-hoon has sex on his mind almost all the time and frequently pressures Soo-jung to make love with him. He's apparently a recovering alcoholic who used to drink five bottles of soju and three bottles of whiskey (in a day)! The late Lee Eun-ju gives a multifaceted performance as the titular virgin. While she's portrayed as vulnerable in Jae-hoon's version, her character is given more assertive dialogue in the second half.

To determine what order the story events occurred in a specific chronology requires additional viewings. Hong shows different camera angles of the same scene when it's repeated later on. He also alters the actions of his characters. Deciding which account is the most truthful is up to the viewer.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Grasshopper Film has brought Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors to the US on Blu-ray for the first time on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. The DI is taken from a 2K restoration. The boutique label has opened up the film's original exhibition ratio of 1.85:1 to 1.78:1. I also own the Spectrum DVD and watched transfers on back-to-back days. The SD is much grainier and has dot crawl in certain areas of the frame. The contrast on the Blu-ray is superior as is the grayscale. Black levels, particularly on Jae-hoon's overcoat, are deeper and more pronounced. The DVD has some film-related artifacts. The Blu-ray contains very few. There's some telecine wobble but that has to do with the camera setup and not how the transfer was done for BD. Compression could have been much better as Grasshopper should have placed the 127-minute feature on a BD-50. The label has given the film an average video bitrate of just 21713 kbps.

A dozen scene selections are provided on the menu.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Grasshopper has supplied a Korean DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (1655 kbps, 16-bit). I also listened to the Spectrum DVD, which carries a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix. Dialogue is crisp on the Blu-ray as are vocal sounds (e.g., Jae-hoon's whining and Soo-jung's shrieks). Traffic noises fill the full aural spectrum, including vehicles passing by and motorbikes whizzing along. Hong uses one of the two front speakers to emphasize spoken words or f/x on at least a few occasions. Composer Ok Kil-sung wrote a piano rhapsody or harmony that gets repeated when a new segment is introduced. It sounds vibrant along the center and front channels.

Grasshopper says it created a new and improved English subtitle translation. The English track on the Spectrum mistranslated a word and also contains at least one typographical error.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Grasshopper hasn't released any bonus materials. There are some previews for the label's other titles.

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors is a jigsaw puzzle well worth piecing together. Even though it's over two hours, both the conspicuous discrepancies and the subtle differences in story recollections by Jae-hoon and Soo-jung are fascinating to contemplate and assemble. Grasshopper Film delivers a very strong transfer from a 2K scan. The lossless audio is solid. Bonus materials are zilch. RECOMMENDED.