Yeoja, Jeong-hye (2004)

Director:

Yoon-ki Lee

Writer:

Yoon-ki Lee (writer)

Release Date:

11 March 2005 (South Korea)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

The hope, one day, to be able to love.

Plot:

This film is a restrained, yet thoroughly engaging, study of a female post office worker's emotional life.

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Jeong-min Hwang	...	Writer Guy
Ji-su Kim	...	Jeong-hae
Mi-seong Kim

Also Known As:

This Charming Girl (International: English title)

Runtime:

South Korea:99 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

South Korea:15

Company:

LJ Film

Movie Connections:

Features Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

Introverted and quiet, but potent

I watched this film the evening after watching X-Men: The Last Stand in part to help wash out the bad taste X3 left in my mouth. This Charming Girl is a quiet introspective film about the life of a post office worker.

The protagonist, is quiet, shy and introverted and just a little bit quirky. A meticulous cleaner, we watch the unfolding of her daily events and slowly, over the course of the movie, we see the connections of her daily activities to past events in her life through a series of blended flashbacks.

The film is meditative and places you inside the life of Jeong-Hae, by asking you to participate with her as she adopts a cat, spends time with her coworkers and explores the more mundane facets of her life. However, as the layers are peeled back into her past, the film does a great job of building empathy for her, especially in light of her past tragedies and scars, and when the situations become slightly less mundane, all the tensions in her past come to light in a controlled, but emotionally potent way. In the end, we understand part of why Jeong-Hae is the way she is thanks to the meticulous study of her behavior and activities along with the insight into her memories.

The directing is impressive in that the director manages to bring the audience into the life of Jeong-Hae with only her daily activities and their connections to the initially mundane-seeming activities in her past. The film is not dialogue heavy and yet it doesn't really drag because of this or the fact that a lot of the film progresses in small steps.

However, this is not a film for the impatient or for those who are afflicted with ADD. The film does take its time, letting the viewer become acquainted with Jeong-Hae in her quiet moments, but at the same time, there isn't a whole lot of action in the traditional sense. In order for a viewer to get something out of this picture, the viewer has to be willing to explore, question and investigate Jeong-Hae in her interactions and activities. That's probably asking a lot out of the typical American film-goer.

Still, the overall impact of the film is quite potent if you're willing to explore it and is quite affecting in the end. I liked it. 8/10.