Five schoolgirls, identical outfits and identical jet black hair, posing for each other's pictures, swearing eternal friendship...a few years later, and the bonds are not so tight as class and social difference threaten feelings, family structures, even livelihoods. Jeong's first feature is one of the most remarkable debuts I've ever seen, a seemingly low-key yet cinematically brilliant and powerfully energetic slice of life story that communicates the dramas at the edge of adulthood, the struggles to succeed in the hustle of the big city or at the margins of society.
At the beginning of the film, the girls are still fairly tight, despite one of them -- proud capitalist-to-be Hye-ju moving to Seoul early in the film, while the rest live in the semi-suburban Incheon, some distance to the west of the capital. They are in constant cell-phone contact, by voice and texting, and this allows the director lots of fun with the visual trope of lettering appearing in various places on the screen when a character is texting another...at first this seemed merely playful to me, but it's clear that she has an agenda involving communication breakdown, despite the instantaneous nature of modern technology; the central character of Tae-hie, direction-less herself but working harder than any of the others to keep them from drifting, actually uses an old-fashioned typewriter while transcribing writing for a man with cerebral palsy -- an indication, perhaps, that she is more aware of both the past and the pitfalls of today. The third major character, Ji-young, lives in poverty and loneliness with her aging grandparents, and it is largely her growing isolation from Hye-ju, her former best friend, that sets what plot there is here in motion. The last two girls are twins Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo and are a bit less well-developed, but not surprisingly so as their devotion to each other helps keep them from needing the others as much.
The film is full of charm and wit, and a growing sense of pathos as the world of adulthood really comes crashing in on a couple of the characters, and the director and her brilliant cinematographer Yeong-hwan Choi make stunning use of windows, mirrors, glasses and the urban landscapes of both the big modern city center and its grimy decaying outreaches to depict the fragmented personalities and souls of a group of girls bouncing back and forth between liberation and servitude -- often self-imposed -- and never really quite aware of what it's all for. The low key, electronically-based score is wistful and romantic, beautiful and perfectly complimentary without ever really dominating the mood. Watched on an excellent Kino DVD, in the fall of 2007.
At the beginning of the film, the girls are still fairly tight, despite one of them -- proud capitalist-to-be Hye-ju moving to Seoul early in the film, while the rest live in the semi-suburban Incheon, some distance to the west of the capital. They are in constant cell-phone contact, by voice and texting, and this allows the director lots of fun with the visual trope of lettering appearing in various places on the screen when a character is texting another...at first this seemed merely playful to me, but it's clear that she has an agenda involving communication breakdown, despite the instantaneous nature of modern technology; the central character of Tae-hie, direction-less herself but working harder than any of the others to keep them from drifting, actually uses an old-fashioned typewriter while transcribing writing for a man with cerebral palsy -- an indication, perhaps, that she is more aware of both the past and the pitfalls of today. The third major character, Ji-young, lives in poverty and loneliness with her aging grandparents, and it is largely her growing isolation from Hye-ju, her former best friend, that sets what plot there is here in motion. The last two girls are twins Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo and are a bit less well-developed, but not surprisingly so as their devotion to each other helps keep them from needing the others as much.
The film is full of charm and wit, and a growing sense of pathos as the world of adulthood really comes crashing in on a couple of the characters, and the director and her brilliant cinematographer Yeong-hwan Choi make stunning use of windows, mirrors, glasses and the urban landscapes of both the big modern city center and its grimy decaying outreaches to depict the fragmented personalities and souls of a group of girls bouncing back and forth between liberation and servitude -- often self-imposed -- and never really quite aware of what it's all for. The low key, electronically-based score is wistful and romantic, beautiful and perfectly complimentary without ever really dominating the mood. Watched on an excellent Kino DVD, in the fall of 2007.