[KFCC] The Quiet Family Review

This two disc Tai Seng release of THE QUIET FAMILY comes complete with a stack of extra features. The first disc contains the film and a wealth of soundtrack options. There’s an original Korean mono soundtrack, a Korean 5.1 surround mix as well as English and Cantonese mono tracks and an English 5.1 mix. That’s probably a few more than are necessary, but you can’t really complain about that! There’s also the option of English and Chinese subtitles – and the English subs are pretty good throughout.

The picture quality for the film itself is fine, with strong blacks and shades although there is a slightly soft appearance to the picture. It’s a little washed out and looks suspiciously like an NTSC to PAL transfer.

Also included on the first disc is a commentary track with the director Kim Ji-woon who is joined by Song Kang-ho for a chatty and occasionally giggly ramble about the film. The subtitles here are not as good as on the main film, there’s the odd grammatical error and I get the impression that they are very simplified translations. Still, it’s better to have these errors rather than no commentary at all.

Over on the second disc there is a good selection of features: trailers for both the film and other Tai Seng releases, four interview featurettes (including an interview with Choi Min-sik who is dressed up in his OLDBOY clothes and wig!), there’s a short ‘Making Of’, two music videos, storyboard comparisons for a couple of scenes and an ‘Original Soundtrack’ segment in which the musical composer discusses a few of the songs written for the film. All of these are worth a watch, but the best extra feature is undoubtedly the inclusion of ‘Coming Out’ – a forty-five minute short film by director Kim Ji-woon.

Sadly, the subtitles are not always of a high standard on the second disc, in fact they are at times annoyingly shoddy. It’s okay for the odd error to slip through, but there’s a few times during the interviews that the translations don’t seem to make sense.

While this two-disc set has a few shortcomings it’s still nice to see THE QUIET FAMILY get something approaching the attention it deserves - the commentary track and inclusion of the ‘Coming Out’ short film make this more than worth a look.

DVD Reviewed by Martin Cleary