Han Gong-ju
2014 · Directed by Lee Su-jin
Original language: Korean
- drama
The story
After being involved in a traumatic incident, 17-year-old Gong-ju is forced to change schools. Uncared for by her parents, her previous teacher arranges for her to hide away at his mother's place. It takes time for her past to catch up with her, but when it does the revelation is devastating.
What it’s like
Handheld, observational camera drifts through cramped school corridors, a dim provincial apartment and a sparsely furnished country house, mostly in flat overcast daylight and the cool greys and browns of a small town. Long takes hold on faces that give away little, and the soundtrack is largely ambient: rain, traffic, footsteps and the scrape of kitchen work, with music rare enough to register as an event. The mood is hushed, slow and quietly dread-heavy, with a stillness that gradually tightens into something close to unbearable. A teenage girl is shuffled between indifferent adults and a fragile refuge, and the film follows her withdrawal and the slow surfacing of what happened to her. The violence of sexual assault sits at the centre of the story, but it is largely unseen and never shown graphically. Its effect comes from aftermath, silence and the adults who look away, so the emotional impact is heavy and sustained rather than gory. This is not gentle viewing. It suits people who want patient, unflinching social realism, who can sit through a grim subject for its honesty, and who are watching alone and ready for a long, sombre afternoon.
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