Yohan Lee recently starred in award winning director Eugene Lee Yang’s film Comfort Girls, which debuted earlier this year at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival where it was an Official Selection. Comfort Girls, which has been referred to by many as a K-Pop satire, deals with the widely spread use of plastic surgery in Korea in a comedic and shocking juxtaposition of reality and the extreme.
In the film Lee plays the dynamic and scathing role of the Emcee, the business savvy manager of the K-Pop music group ‘Comfort Girls’, as well as the host of the show that the film’s story revolves around.
The film follows the ‘Comfort Girls’, a music sensation comprised of four young Korean sisters who are pushed by their parents and their manager, Emcee, played by Lee, to undergo intensive plastic surgery transformations to make them more appealing to their audience of imperialist international leaders. During the film, the ‘Comfort Girls’ are primped and prepped by Lee’s character Emcee, who lectures them on the importance of their appearance and performance.
Lee shows his ability to play an expert manipulator in the film as viewers witness his character convince the girls to seduce a group of imperialist leaders from America, Japan, Russia, and China, with their beauty and catchy K-Pop tunes.
“I used Ceasar Flickerman’s character, the emcee from the Hunger Games, as a reference point, which not only helped me tap into the energetic and persuasive voice my character used while hosting the show, but also helped me get a better understanding of how to embody a character’s evil nature with subtlety, as my character couldn’t be openly corrupt, ” explained Yohan Lee.
Comfort Girls was produced by The Menagerie, a Los Angeles-based production company with an impressive history of past work which includes the film Ma Cité, Mon Histoire, as well as the music video’s for Dead Can Dance’s “Children of the Sun”, Poliça’s “Wandering Star”, Che'Nelle’s “It's Happening Again”, Tah Mac’s "Oxygen", and more. The film was written and directed by Eugene Lee Yang, more commonly known as ELY, whose films include Wanderlust, Larmoyant, I’m Not a Princess, Serenata and many more. Yang has received several awards over the course of his career including the $50,000 grand prize for his film The Art of Fame at the LG Fame US contest, and an honorable mention at the Vanity Fair/Banana Republic commercial film awards.