Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 26/52 | Directed by an Asian woman
Seoul 1994
14-year-old Kim Eun-hee is growing up in a lower-class family. Her father is violently angry at the world for not giving him the respect he wants, and he takes it out on Eun-hee and her older sister, Su-hee, telling them to drop dead for being so stupid. Her mother has checked out, her only happiness being the prospect of Eun-hee going to university — something her family could only afford for her older brother. Su-hee sneaks out and stays out late, getting drunk and avoiding the family, feeling like she isn’t good at anything. Their older brother, Dae-hoon, is the only one their parents are kind to, even when he physically and verbally assaults Eun-hee.
In school, Eun-hee spends most of her time drawing comics in her notebook. She has trouble reading English. The other girls gossip about how stupid they think she is. The teacher makes each student write down who they believe is a delinquent. They all write Eun-hee. Her best friend is Ji-suk, with whom she takes a Chinese cram class after school. They get a new teacher, Kim Young-ji, who shows interest in the girls and supports Eun-hee’s love of drawing. Her boyfriend, Ji-wan, sends her loving pager codes and treats her sweetly. One day, the two try kissing for the first time, and Eun-hee is aglow.
Eun-hee fantasizes about killing herself and blaming it on her brother, with the caveat that she gets to be a ghost for a day so she can see her dad finally yell at him. When she shares this with Ji-suk, Ji-suk wonders whether her parents or Eun-hee’s would actually care if they were gone. While riding on the bus to school one morning, Eun-hee feels a lump behind her ear. She asks Ji-wan to feel, but he isn’t sure. When Eun-hee shows her mother, her mother tells her to go to the hospital straight away tomorrow. Eun-hee and Ji-suk go clubbing — while out back smoking, they meet a girl named Bae Yu-ri who has a crush on Eun-hee.
The film follows the many threads of Eun-hee’s life, watching them furl and unfold as everything changes for her.
Among all the people that you know, how many do you understand?
Writer and director Kim Bora draws on her childhood, using the collapse of the Seongsu bridge as a central moment to highlight the rapid development of the time. For years, Seoul prioritized faster construction, allowing bids that could do it the cheapest and quickest. This culture of 빨리빨리 (ppalli ppali, quickly quickly) has continued since, leading to numerous disasters — because they stem from these sociopolitical choices, South Koreans call them social disasters.
Thematically, the film explores Eun-hee’s relationship to the world as a lower-class child. Her classmates and teachers see her as delinquent, which encourages her to engage in even more delinquent behavior. Her family, disappointed in their lot, lash out at her. Her boyfriend, Ji-wan, stops seeing her because his family is of a higher class than hers, and his mother forbids it. Eun-hee sees banners of people begging not to have their homes taken away by all the development work, and doesn’t understand why anyone would take someone’s home.
Kim Young-ji is sort of the ideal person for Eun-hee to meet — incredibly supportive, a visible queer person, and with a bookshelf full of books on questioning capitalism and the intersection of feminism and class politics. If only we all could have met someone like her in eighth grade. It’s she who helps Eun-hee understand how little she knows about the people around her, and about those whose homes are under threat.
There's so much absurdity, isn't there? […] We shouldn't pity them so easily, because we don't know anything.
Park Ji-hu gives such a tremendous performance! She carries so much of Eun-hee’s repressed emotions and fears behind her eyes, making subtle shifts that feel like we’re watching the ocean of her thoughts pass through them. It’s been a while since I’ve felt so much empathy for a character. The director spent three years casting the perfect Eun-hee, and she succeeded.
At times, the film feels a bit overlong. Understandably, when a director’s first film is based on personal experiences, it’s very easy to get precious with those details and feel like they are all important, because they were all important to becoming who they are. Also, first-time directors often feel they won’t get another chance to make a movie. That said, I don’t know what exactly I would cut.
Overall, this film is beautiful and tender. My heart is full afterward, and the final scene is perfect.
Will my life start to shine one day?
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amazon-primeasiancinemachallenge2023asiancc2023asiancc2023week26written-by-womendirected-by-womenqueercoming-of-ageteddy