Summary
Notable directorial debut by the Korean Hong Sung-eun, which exposes with a subtlety as extraordinary as it is forceful the crisis of a young woman who chose solitude as a way of life.
Review
A young woman leads a solitary existence until certain events begin to question that way of life.
Jina (or Jin-ah) works in a credit card customer service call center. She is a holojok, a term that defines in South Korea people who live alone in cities, without relatives, partners or friends. She avoids as much as possible any contact and verbal communication, unless it is unavoidable. The film recounts how certain circumstances begin to crack this emotional strength: the reunion with her father, being forced to train a new employee, the death of a neighbor, circumstances that force her to socialize and that in some cases constitute an uncomfortable mirror.
Hong Sung-eun's remarkable debut feature exposes with extraordinary subtlety what Jina is feeling (she is not the only lonely one in the story), in front of that game of mirrors that speak to her of her present and perhaps of her future and those interactions who lives as intrusions in his world dominated by efficient and dispassionate work and permanent connection to screens. The story is not content with sticking to the drama, but rather adds some disturbing elements and few but accurate touches of humor, creating a climate that captures the viewer. And always with what I call the "elegance" of South Korean fiction.
All of this could not work without the extraordinary performance of Gong Seung-yeon as Jina, who owns a mask of infinite shades that perfectly describe what she expresses and suggest what she hides.
