If
ever there was a film one would not want to be based on a true story, it would
Lee Su-jin’s emotionally bracing feature debut. Yet, even if viewers do not
know it is inspired by a notorious 2004 case viewers will immediately sense
there is something terribly real behind it. Sadly, the crime is only the start
of a process of victimization in Lee’s Han
Gong-ju (trailer
here), which
screens tomorrow during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.
Han
Gong-ju is smart and musically talented. She is the sort of student any school
should be delighted to have, but her principal is pulling strings to transfer her
out. She is effectively being expelled despite, as she rightly insists, having
done nothing wrong. A former teacher accompanies her to Incheon, arranging for
her to live temporarily with his mother. He keeps everyone in the dark
regarding her recent past and Han is not about to talk about it.
Slowly,
Han recommences with life, but she fiercely guards her privacy. Occasionally,
she hears from her alcoholic single father, but his calls usually portend
trouble. Nevertheless, she slowly develops a friendship with a classmate,
Eun-hee, who is in awe of her singer-songwriter talents. Unfortunately, as Lee
slowly reveals the ugly details of the initial crime (which is never very
difficult to deduce), ominous signs suggest the dark past will intrude on the
imperfect present.
Without
question, the film serves as a blistering indictment of Korea’s less than
progressive attitudes towards victims of sex crimes and the decidedly unjust legal
mechanisms that allow the wealthy to literally buy their way out of
convictions. However, it never feels like an issue paper or a Lifetime original
movie, largely due to Chun Woo-hee’s subtle yet agonizingly devastating lead
performance. Ironically, she is a twenty-something established movie star,
playing a teenager (but Michael J. Fox did the same thing for nearly a decade
as Alex Keaton and Marty McFly). Regardless, it is a harrowing portrayal of
resiliency under extreme emotional distress.
Chun
dominates and defines Han Gong-ju, but
she has some nice support from Lee Young-ran as her host, Ms. Lee. It is a
tricky role that suggests some parallels with Han, while emphasizing the extent
of deep-seated societal prejudices. Jung In-sun’s relentlessly upbeat Eun-hee also
has some effective moments serving a somewhat similar function for Han’s teenage
generation. The rest of the ensemble is stuck with mostly anonymous and usually
decidedly sinister character-types, but their screen time is limited and the
audience will not really want to meet them anyway.