[Film Review] A Girl at My Door (2014) and Next Sohee (2022)
English Title: A Girl at My Door
Original Title: Dohee-ya
Year: 2014
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Genre: Drama
Director/Screenwriter: July Jung
Music: Jang Young-Gyu
Cinematography: Kim Hyun-Suk
Editor: Lee Young-Rim
Cast:
Doona Bae
Kim Sae-ron
Song Sae-byeok
Son Jong-hak
Gong Myeong
Kim Jong-gu
Jang Hie-jin
Moon Sung-keun
Lee Jung-eun
Kim Min-jae
Park Jin-woo
Arvind Allok
Rating: 8.1/10
English Title: Next Sohee
Original Title: Da-eum So-hee
Year: 2022
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Genre: Drama
Director/Screenwriter: July Jung
Music: Jang Young-gyu
Cinematography: Kim Il-yeon
Editor: Lee Young-im
Cast:
Kim Si-eun
Doona Bae
Jung Hoe-rin
Kang Hyan-oh
Park Hee-eun
Kim Yong-joon
Shim Hee-seop
Han Hye-ji
Kim Woo-kyum
Choi Hee-jin
Song Yo-seb
Yoon Ga-i
Yoo Jung-ho
Park Woo-young
Park Yoon-hee
Park Soo-young
Eom Ok-ran
Rating: 8.2/10
Female directors from South Korea are few and far between, Kim Do-young is a recent one, whose directorial debut KIM JI-YOUNG: BORN 1982 (2019) is a slashing tirade of a sexist society that can drives a healthy woman into insanity. July Jung is another emergent name, whose two features A GIRL AT MY DOOR and NEXT SOHEE are crying commentaries that resoundingly rouse audience's social consciousness, both starring Doona Bae as a sympathetic police detective, grappling with the injustices befalling on a young girl.
In A GIRL AT MY DOOR, Bae is Young-nam, the new chief of a police substation in a seaside town of Yeosu, shunted from Seoul. Despite of her intention to drown her numbness in soju and lie low for a year so she could be transferred back to the capital, Young-nam takes a bullied 14-year-old girl Do-hee (Kim Sae-ron) under her wing from her abusive step-father Yong-ha (Song Sae-byeok) and eventually must face the latter's unwarranted accusation of sexual abuse of Do-hee once her homosexuality (which is also the occasion behind her transfer) is revealed when her ex-lover (Jang Hee-jin) pays her an unbidden visit. Unexpectedly, this time it is up to Do-hee to reciprocate Young-nam with a daring ploy that ingeniously kills two birds with one stone, rescuing both from precarity,
Through Yong-ha's outrageous bravado, Jung’s film consciously teases that there might be something wrong with Do-hee, which sows an insidious seed of victimology in a viewer’s head space. But of course there is something wrong with Do-hee. Living under the same roof with such a heinous monster like Yong-ha and constantly being picked on by her schoolmates, Do-hee is anything but an ordinary 14-year-older, she is deprived of such a luxury. She is precocious, borderline maniac, has too many wiles to spare for her age. Then, Jung's fine-grained script sticks its landing with a stupendous ending, which binds the her and Young-nam together as it dawns on the latter that failing a proper guidance, a girl like Do-hee will become a pariah in the society. Presently it is incumbent on her to assume an indispensable beacon for Do-hee, whether there is any sapphic attractions between them instantly becomes inconsequential.
Jung refutes a similar misconception that is impinged upon a young girl in NEXT SOHEE, which unfold like a diptych. In the first half, we follow So-hee (Kim Si-eun), a spirited, dance-loving teenager in the last year of her vocational high school, who gets an externship and is subcontracted to a call center of a famous telecommunications company. Yet, the job turns out to be a nightmare beyond her wildest imagination. So-hee is blatantly exploited by the company's callous policies and ultimately overcame by the grim suicidal ideation.
In the second half, Detective Yoo-jin (Bae) takes it on herself to piece together So-hee's tragedy, which she discovers is due to a systematic crime of corporate inhumanity and duplicity, governmental and institutional inactions and connivance, further aided by police coverup (a whistleblower case is summarily hushed, Han Hye-ji is heartbreaking as the widow, appearing only in two scenes but enough to provide a whole picture of her side of woes and injustice), parental negligence (So-hee's parents are partially answerable because they choose to ignore the yellow flag. Park Hee-eun, as So-hee’s mother, is exceptionally good at conveying a jaded abstraction that itself may stem from the society’s perennial repression) and the dearth of basic human compassion (South Korea's infamous low birth rate speaks volume here), that looms over many a young student like So-hee, any of which can be the "next So-hee".
What really makes Yoo-jin's hackles rise (and audience's too) is the loathsome imputation that the problem should be chalked up to So-hee’s own makeup, for being undisciplined and short-fused. It reaches the boiling point when Yoo-jin blows a fuse and bluntly assaults an authority figure for his putrid badmouthing, which echos So-hee's anguished outburst of violence towards her supercilious superior (Choi Hee-jin). The catharsis of agony unleashed can emit such an amazing feeling that even vicariously, a viewer can get a respite from all the pressure and stress and Jung surely knows when to pack a punch!
As a matter of fact, apart from her exalted discernment of the disparaging, pernicious influences on women in a modern yet congenitally traditional and patriarchal society, Jung as a filmmaker, is endowed with commendable facility that could lead audience to brave the egregious adversity and unfairness presented on the screen. On paper, no sane mind would be willingly to watch the unsavory affairs like a child abused by her drunkard father, or a peppy girl driven to miserabalism by a suppressing environment where no one she can turn to. But why are we magnetized by Jung's films as she gently but firmly pushes us to face the harsh reality? Because she exhibits a uniquely empathetic sensibility that may derive from her feminine compassion. She motivates us to see the banality of evil at close quarter, which it is never sensationalized. Its effect is cumulative and boiling points are brilliantly mined along the way. Sometimes, we can even glance at the fleeting weakness and hesitation behind all the macho yelling, browbeating and vituperations whereas her female characters breast every confrontation and affliction with gritted teeth, soldering on even they are peppered with wounds.
Both films are cris de cœur in the most ardent expression and shored up by riveting leading performances. Doona Bae is an expert of projecting emotions with minimal expressions. As Young-nam, her flintiness denotes that she is monolith of authority and justice. She owes no explanation to anyone for her righteous actions, and her queerness is only telegraphed through understated moments of tenderness. As Yoo-jin, with less backstory behind her character, Bae takes a different approach, maintaining a superficial matter-of-factness but doesn’t suffer affronts gladly. Yoo-jin responds to strictures with a surge of recriminations, and it is such a spectacular blunt force to behold.
In A GIRL AT MY DOOR, however, it is Kim Sae-ron who can give Bae a run for her own money, Do-hee’s über-complexity as a teen victim with a twisted streak is always a high-water mark to pull off for actors of a young age, which Sae-ron achieves with incredible credibility. From scene to scene, it is impossible to pin her down. Meanwhile Kim Si-eun also marches Bae stride for stride in NEXT SOHEE, through the two have only one scene together. Si-eun persuasively carves out So-hee’s sea change, how her youthful sparks and fighting spirits get chipped away piece by piece under exploitation and mistreatment, how a sorrowfulness of snow settles in her young heart and a chink of sunshine becomes an atypical memento mori when she decides to shuffle off this mortal coil. In the mass, July Jung avails herself remarkably of a stirring, universally relatable approach laying down women’s predicament in the open. The eight-year gap between her two films is self-evident of her difficulties in securing funding, for that reason alone, we shall never stint on our pats on the back of such an original, gallant female new voice, who needs all the allyship she can keep ploughing on.
referential entries: Hirokazu Kore-eda's AIR DOLL (2009, 7.2/10); Kim Do-young's KIM JI-YOUNG: BORN 1982 (2019, 7.7/10).
