[FOUNTAIN]A Fuss Till Death Do You Part

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[FOUNTAIN]A Fuss Till Death Do You Part

The Korean movie "How to Kill My Wife," produced in 1994, is a black comedy about a man who uses his wife's nagging as an excuse to play around with another woman and finally decides to kill his spouse. He uses as many resources as possible to accomplish the plan but fails. Finally he hires a professional killer. But his wife continues to disappoint him by eluding death. The movie ends with the wife hiring an assassin to kill her husband.

A man plotting to murder his wife and a woman plotting to kill her husband have been the stuff of classic American movies. "Sudden Fear," directed by David Miller and released in 1952, is a classic thriller about conspiracy to murder a spouse.

In the movie, a wealthy heiress discovers that her husband married her only for her money and plans to kill her. So she devises a plan to get back at her husband.

"The War of the Roses" is a dark comedy directed by Danny DeVito in 1989. The movie, in which Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner star, shows that such a hell-like war is possible even between a couple who had been married to each other for as long as 17 years. After fierce domestic battles, the wife and husband plunge from a chandelier together and die.

In "Dolores Claiborne," a mystery suspense directed by Taylor Hackford in 1995, a woman throws her drunken husband into a well, unable to endure his cruel treatment any longer.

In the Korean thriller, "Happy End," released in 1999, a man who lost his job, stabs his unfaithful wife to death. There is also a Hong Kong comedy, "100 Ways to Kill Your Wife," in which Chow Yun Fat stars.

According to reports, police in the United States and Canada are searching for a Korean man over the mysterious deaths of his three wives. His first and second wives were shot to death in the United States: one in 1983 and the other in 1985. His third wife drowned in a lake in Vancouver, in 1990, after the boat she and her husband were sailing capsized. The first two wives are said to have carried millions of dollars of life insurance. The real world is crueler than movies.

The relation between wife and husband is the closest, but it can suddenly turn into a relation of mutual enemies. Women say men cry in front of their dead wives but smile in the toilet. Relations between wife and husband are mysterious. There is a Russian proverb that says only God can judge the relationship.

The saying that "A deaf husband and a blind wife make the happiest couple" might be true.



The writer is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.


by Bae Myung-bok

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