When Desire Becomes a Currency
Cinema has often exposed the hidden greed of powerful families. Few films, however, do it with the raw intimacy of The Taste of Money (2012) directed by Im Sang-soo. The film explores the darker corners of South Korea’s upper class, where the inherited wealth of families comes with a curse, and the love of many is sacrificed for power. But even more fascinating than the film’s lavish accoutrements and its scandalous story is how the actors’ real-life triumphs and challenges correspond to the emotions of the characters with which they wrestle.
A Family of Shadows
At its core, The Taste of Money is primarily a narrative about the Baek family. The patriarch, played by Baek Yoon-shik, is a man trapped by an ill-built conscience and the empire that surrounds him. Yoon Yeo-jung’s character is the iron-willed matriarch who controls not only the household but the corporation as well. Their daughter (Kim Hyo-jin) and son (On Joo-wan) wrestle with sin-laden inheritance, caught between unflinching indulgence and a quiet yearning for escape.
Young-jak (Kim Kang-woo) works as the family secretary, a dual role that thrusts him into the spiral of moral decay, forbidden lust, and eventually, corruption. Adulterous affairs, betrayals, and the sinister drug of power running an entire household.
Yoon Yeo-jung: The Queen Onscreen and Off
Yoon Yeo-jung’s matriarch performance is the ‘spine’ of the film. The character is cold, commanding, and unapologetically manipulative—a woman utilizing her wealth as both a shield and a weapon. In real life, Yeo-jung carried her own struggles long before becoming the international icon we know today.
Unlike her character, she worked off the screen for many years after marrying, then returned in middle age to a thriving career in a then male-dominated industry. The character’s cruel shield matched the off-screen resentment of being pushed aside. Her role as the matriarch was a challenge, and audiences rooted for her. Yeo-jung eventually married the role as the ‘spine’ of the film and in the process, carved out a second career. The role as matriarch was a challenge, and audiences rooted for her. The role as matriarch was a challenge, and audiences rooted for her. She won an Oscar for Minari, a performance that echoes with earlier films. The Taste of Money marked Yeo-jung as the indomitable lead, a role that proved she could carry the film.
Baek Yoon-shik: A Mirror of Contradictions
As the patriarch, Baek Yoon-shik played a man torn between decency and decay. Interestingly, his off-screen life also had shades of contradiction. Known in Korea for both his sophisticated image and his turbulent personal life, Baek brought to the role a lived-in weariness, the kind of quiet guilt that isn’t easy to fake.
Audiences sensed that he wasn’t just acting out a character, but exhaling pieces of himself—his regrets, his battles, his vulnerabilities. That is why his scenes, even when understated, carried an emotional weight that lingered long after the credits rolled.
Kim Kang-woo: The Outsider Who Dares
Kim Kang-woo, who played Young-jak, wasn’t born into privilege—unlike his character, he too had to fight for recognition in a cutthroat industry. Coming from a modest background, he entered the film world without the family connections that often ease the path for actors in Korea. His own journey of navigating systems of power gave him insight into his role as the outsider sucked into a world of temptation and corruption.A striking nuance in the performance occurs in scenes where Young-jak appears intrigued by the wealth, yet, paradoxically, horrified by its hollowness. Within these scenes, one cannot help but feel that Kang-woo was personally experiencing the temptations of fame that he was trying to convey to the audience, underlining that fame is a double-edged sword.
Between Scandal and Beauty
At the time of shooting, Kim Hyo-jin, who played the daughter, was experiencing her own life changes. While married to Yoo Ji-tae, she was trying to find ways to carve an identity as an individual and an actress, distinct from her more prominent husband. The frustration of that struggle to define herself informed the portrayal of her character, who is desperately seeking love and genuine connection in a family that offers only manipulation.
Her performance has often been described as the “quiet rebellion” within the movie—an echo of her own attempt to stand independently as an artist in Korea’s star-driven industry.
Behind the Velvet Curtains
Tension surrounded the making of The Taste of Money. Im Sang-soo, known for bold filmmaking, had previously directed The Housemaid (2010), which left audiences stunned because of its sexual explicitness and class critique. The Taste of Money seemed to continue this line of work, but in a more audacious manner. The performers were required to bare themselves, both figuratively and literally, in deeply intimate, even excruciating, sequences.
Yoon Yeo-jung later expressed in several interviews how these scenes were challenging, but pivotal in portraying the full extent of the hypocrisy that surrounds the affluent, in contrast to Kim Kang-woo, who candidly discussed the awkwardness that love scenes with extreme intimacy entailed while explaining that the mental challenge resided in the paradox of preserving a raw truth, while not allowing it to descend into mere sensationalism.
One could almost feel the charged atmosphere, even in those luxury surrounds. The grand mansions, opulent furniture, and even the deliberate positioning of wine glasses were meant to serve as a constant reminder of the façade that the family built. It was, actors later confessed, a reflection of their own, private, storms.
The Cultural Aftertaste
The film received a mixed response from critics when it premiered at Cannes. While some appreciated its bold tackle on greed, others considered it to be self-indulgent. However, it struck a raw nerve in Korea. The families represented in the film, portrayed as elite and powerful, were not distant figments of fiction. The audience recognized these families and their scandals, as they were part of the chaebols, politics, and societal gossip of the time.
For audiences in India, there is also an understanding of this resonance. We recognize what it is like to have power concentrate behind closed doors, where family dynasties control politics and business, and the opulence of wealth is a cover for the abuses and rot underneath. Watching The Taste of Money feels like a mirror reflecting our own inequalities, only it is dressed in the silk and marble of a foreign culture.
More Than a Film, a Confession
The Taste of Money lingers in the mind not only for its intricate plot of betraying lust and love, but for the performers and the ghosts of their own lives they infused into the film. Yoon Yeo-jung’s strength, Baek Yoon-shik’s complexities, Kim Kang-woo’s outsider vulnerability, and Kim Hyo-jin’s muted fight for independence were all harmoniously interlaced as a part of the narrative. The film was as much about the characters as it was about the performers.
The film raises the question: How much does desire cost? For the characters, the answer is everything; family, dignity, even love is sacrificed. For the performers, it was the much-needed bravery; the bravery to reveal themselves on screen, to the extent that it blurred the limits of art and personal confession.
This is what makes The Taste of Money unforgettable. Not simply as cinema, but as a haunting, human truth; truth that is wrapped in silk and greed, scarred by the sheer, hopeless desperation that love can survive the suffocating embrace of wealth.
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