Kim Saebyuk – Windows on Worlds

For some, life is a series of stages. Education, work, marriage, parenthood, death. For others, life is more like a continuous stream, a series of minor movements in an ongoing symphony. The couple at the centre of Kim Dae-hwan’s second film, The First Lap (초행, Cho-haeng), are contentedly (for the most part) trapped in a permanent adolescence living chaotic lives aside from what most would consider the mainstream. Together for seven years but still unmarried, Ji-young (Kim Saebyuk) and Su-hyeon (Cho Hyun-chul) are forced to confront their liminal status when the twin pressures of a pregnancy scare and obligatory family visits place a strain on their otherwise settled relationship.

Their two year rental contract up for renewal, Ji-young and Su-hyeon are packing up to move somewhere cheaper when Su-hyeon gets an awkward phone call from his brother inviting him home for his father’s 60th birthday party. Su-hyeon obviously does not want to go and makes a series of excuses despite Ji-young’s urging that he should probably attend. Ji-young also drops the bombshell that she’s worried she might be pregnant which raises several problems for the couple both financial and emotional. The next day they set off on a trip, but it’s to visit Ji-young’s well-to-do parents in their new high-rise Incheon apartment.

Kim structures the film around the two very distinct family environments, subtly suggesting the various reasons neither Ji-young or Su-hyeon are in favour of moving onto the next stage stems back to their own problematic upbringings. Though Ji-young’s family are financially secure and occupy a traditionally middle-class social stratum with her father working for the government and mother in real estate, the home is a cold one and Ji-young’s mother a harsh and direct woman who is unafraid to speak her mind regarding what she sees as her daughter’s poor life choices. In what will become a recurrent motif, Ji-young’s mother wants to know why the couple aren’t married, pointing out Ji-young’s advancing age and the unseemliness of an unmarried woman over thirty. After pointedly telling Ji-young she is not proud of her and in fact thinks of her as a disappointing embarrassment, Ji-young’s mother goes off the deep end on discovering the pregnancy test in Ji-young’s bag, driven into a fury of conservative discombobulation at the thought of being grandmother to a child born out of wedlock.

Ji-young is afraid to become a mother in case she becomes hers and does to her child what her mother has done to her. Su-hyeon has a similar problem, though his is one of intense discomfort with his familial environment in growing up in an unhappy home. Travelling back to the tiny fishing village where Su-hyeon’s parents used to own a sashimi restaurant but now apparently work for a factory which has all but destroyed the area’s previously lucrative tourist industry, Ji-young could not be more out of place. Unlike the ordered coldness of Ji-young’s parents’ swanky apartment, Su-hyeon’s family home is one of repressed heat in which longstanding arguments seem permanently primed to spark. Su-hyeon, depressingly used to this kind of scene, ushers Ji-young out the door just as it looks about to kick off, only for her to urge him back to “do something’ – something he’s long given up the idea of doing. Su-hyeon does not want to live in this kind of family or make his wife as miserable as his mother has been married to a man she can’t stand who holds only contempt for his more sensitive son.

Thus Ji-young and Su-hyeon find themselves at an impasse facing both economic anxiety and long-standing emotional fears for the future. All around them, society seems to be in flux, Su-hyeon travels through a subway as protestors from the “Candlelight Revolution” make their way home after another long day spent peacefully protesting the administration of Park Geun-hye. Even young couples like Ji-young and Su-hyeon not usually interested in politics are drawn to the movement, suddenly finding themselves free to consider a better future, not the one they’re supposed to have but the one they actually want (if they can figure out what that actually is). A visit to the protest proves a surprisingly romantic outing. Sharing hot soup in the midst of candle light and gentle music, the pair wander around, still directionless and unsure where exactly it is that they’re going but happy to be together wherever it is they might end up.

Screened at London Korean Film Festival 2017. Screening again in Manchester in 11th November, 1.30pm.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Have you ever met someone for the first time but felt as if you’ve been friends all your lives? Maybe you’ve been depressed and lonely enough to knock on a stranger’s door wishing you had that kind of friendship because there’s very little else in your life, but you probably didn’t find anyone quite as willing to play along as the increasingly fragile Mihee (Lee Sanghee) does when she marches up to Sungsook’s (Hong Seungyi) home and announces herself as a long lost childhood friend. From that description alone Jamsil (누에치던 방, Nuechideon Bang) sounds as if it could be a dark tale of stolen identity and mental disturbance, but first time feature director Lee Wanmin’s intentions are not so severe. Defying rational explanation and looping back through past traumas and regrets, Jamsil is a tale of female friendship in all of its complexity but also of its immediacy and warmth.

30-something Mihee has taken the bar exam several times, unsuccessfully. Wondering if now is the time to give up on a legal career but afraid she’s left it too late to get any other kind of job, Mihee wanders aimlessly, not really doing much of anything at all. Growing tired of having no money and of having the moping, listless Mihee to contend with, Mihee’s graduate student boyfriend throws her out and ends the relationship. Faced with her lack of money, Mihee can only afford a run down apartment in a dodgy part of town with a strange and invasive landlady. Mihee, going quietly mad through loneliness and feelings of failure, makes the strange decision to knock on a stranger’s door, stating that she and the woman on the other side were once best friends at high school.

This seems improbable as the woman, Sungsook, seems to be around ten year’s older than Mihee, but even so Sungsook lets her in and tries to comfort the obviously distressed woman as best she can. Sungsook’s live-in partner, her childhood sweetheart Ikju (Lim Hyongkook), does not like Sungsook’s habit of letting strangers into their home and sets out to investigate Mihee only to begin having an affair with her whilst keeping his relationship to Sungsook secret. Meanwhile, Sungsook develops an attraction for a younger reporter who wrote something nice about an avant-garde theatre show in which she performed.

Though Mihee and Sungsook have obviously never met before they seem to share an immediate connection and soon become firm friends. Both women are thrown back to the trials and traumas of their teenage years, confronting choices they did and didn’t make or which were made for them. A ghost from Sungsook’s past has literally followed her all the way into the future as the spectre of absent friends continues to mar her relationship with Ikju. Mihee was guided to Sungsook by a teenage girl with the same name as Sungsook’s real teenage best friend, who for some reason reminded her of her younger self, but Mihee’s decision to track down her own high school confidant does not go well as she leaves repeated messages on her voicemail which are never returned before making a final, drastic bid for recognition.

Both Mihee and Sungsook are in some way, stalled, unable to reconcile what it is they want with what they’re supposed to be. Perhaps they, like the silkworms which give their name to this particular part of town, must leave something of themselves behind in order to move forward, but then perhaps those memories can be spun into something finer and softer to the touch than the jagged scars they currently seem to be. Lee’s shooting style leans towards indie naturalism, but mixes in a little avant-garde theatricality with her “actors” and their discussions of political terminology or brief snippets of philosophical musings on the wider nature of existence. Never quite earning its two hour plus running time, Jamsil is nevertheless a deep and fascinating exploration of romanticised pasts and depressed futures in which female friendship is both salvation and destruction but always a strong and abiding connection spun in the larval stage.

Screened at London Korean Film Festival 2017.

Subtitled clip

Interview with director Lee Wanmin conducted at Busan International Film Festival 2016.

Tag: Kim Saebyuk

The First Lap (초행, Kim Dae-hwan, 2017)

Jamsil (누에치던 방, Lee Wanmin, 2016)