A Girl at My Door

A Girl at My Door
Film poster
Directed by	July Jung
Produced by	Lee Chang-dong Lee Joon-dong
Written by	July Jung
Starring	Bae Doona Kim Sae-ron Song Sae-byeok
Music by	Jang Young-gyu Han Hee-jung
Cinematography	Kim Hyun-seok
Edited by	Lee Young-lim
Distributed by	CGV Movie Collage CJ Entertainment
Release dates	19 May 2014 (2014-05-19) (Cannes) 22 May 2014 (2014-05-22) (South Korea)
Running time	119 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Budget	US$300,000[1]
Box office	US$569,809[2]

A Girl at My Door (Hangul: 도희야; RR: Dohui-ya) is a 2014 South Korean drama film directed by July Jung, starring Bae Doona and Kim Sae-ron.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} It screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Due to the ambiguous relationship between the two main characters, the film was largely financed by the Korean Film Council. Because of this, the budget was limited to US$300,000 and Bae and Kim agreed to not be paid.^[1]

Plot

Police academy instructor Lee Young-nam (Bae Doona) gets transferred from Seoul to a quiet and remote seaside town in Yeosu to take office as the head of the a police substation there following a personal scandal. All of her subordinates in the station are men, most of whom are older than her. Young-nam tries to be polite, keep a low profile and tolerate the drunken excesses of some of the locals, though at home she drinks heavily herself – decanting soju into water bottles and finding drinking is the only way she can get to sleep. The town's income comes mostly from octopus, and farming oysters and fish, and its leading entrepreneur is Park Yong-ha (Song Sae-byeok), who employs undocumented immigrants of Southeast Asian and Korean-Chinese descent, many of whom are underpaid or not paid at all. The rest of the population are largely aging natives, as their children all leave for cities once grown.

Young-nam meets Seon Do-hee (Kim Sae-ron), a timid and withdrawn 14 year-old girl, covered with cuts and bruises; Do-hee is bullied by classmates in school and physically abused by her violent stepfather Yong-ha since Do-hee's mother abandoned them. Most of the locals, however, keep silent about the injustices that Do-hee and the migrant workers endure, as Yong-ha helps them make money. After the dead body of Yong-ha's mother is found floating in the water, ruled an accidental death caused by the drunk older woman crashing her motorbike into the sea, Yong-ha attacks Do-hee yet again. Concerned for Do-hee's safety, Young-nam offers to let the teenager stay at her house during the summer vacation, despite scrutiny from the villagers about their unusual living arrangements. For the first time in her life, Do-hee has someone who does not hit her and who actually calls her by her name (hence the Korean title Dohee-ya), instead of swearing at her, and the two wounded women offer each other friendship and solace. But this happy period abruptly ends when Yong-ha finds out Young-nam's secrets, which are linked to why she was demoted back in Seoul, and uses them against her.^[12][13][14]

Cast

• Bae Doona as Inspector Lee Young-nam
• Kim Sae-ron as Seon Do-hee
• Song Sae-byeok as Park Yong-ha
• Kim Jin-gu as Park Jeom-soon, Yong-ha's mother
• Son Jong-hak as Captain Eom
• Na Jong-min as Kim, policeman
• Gong Myeong as Kwon, policeman
• Kim Jong-gu as Boss Choi
• Park Jin-woo as Chief detective
• Arvind Alok as Bakim, foreign worker
• Robin Shiek as Salam, foreign worker
• Pokhrel Barun as Hoang, foreign worker
• Kang In-young as Hairdresser
• Lee Hyeon-jeong as Young-nam's landlady
• Moon Sung-keun as Nam Gyeong-dae, police superintendent in Seoul
• Jang Hee-jin as Eun-jeong, Young-nam's ex-lover
• Kim Min-jae as Jun-ho, policeman

Reception

At the film's official Cannes screening at the Theatre Debussy, the audience gave it a three-minute standing ovation and it received mostly positive reviews from the media.^[15][16][17]

Screen Daily called it "a resolutely left-field and refreshingly off-kilter drama [...] a deftly intriguing tale of alcoholism and abuse that starts off as a seemingly familiar domestic drama before spiralling off into something more unnerving and vaguely disturbing. It is driven by a strong cast and makes the most of it rural location that should be an idyllic but in fact its surface beauty covers up a series of rather dysfunctional people. The film is given heart and soul by a magnetic performance by the excellent Doona Bae."^[18]

Variety wrote that the "wrenching drama" is a "layered expose of violence and bigotry in provincial Korean society" powered by "mesmerizing" performances by Bae Doona and Kim Sae-ron. It described Bae's portrayal as "both towering and frail," while "Kim is electrifying."^[19]

Twitch Film praised it as "Korean cinema at its finest," "gripping from start to finish [...] with its fair share of high drama, but unlike most of its Korean compatriots, it never overplays its hand and treats its audience with respect," and "so well-wrought that one can't help but be swept up in its artistry, which effortlessly plunges us into an intellectual reverie."^[20]

The Korea Herald said it "deftly blends mystery and thriller," "does an impressive job of tackling modern Korean social issues, including alcoholism, homosexuality, small-town politics, migration and labor," and praised "the three lead actors, especially Bae," who "offer memorable performances as troubled, lonely and searching souls."^[21]

The Hollywood Reporter was less impressed: "While Jung's efforts to avoid sensationalism and employ multiple threads are very admirable, the result is a mild-mannered piece short of a sufficiently substantial exposition of its plethora of characters and the problem they face. All this leads to Bae giving an internalized performance dangerously close to blankness; fortunately, Kim is on hand with a turn that suitably brings to the screen the psychotic state of her battered character."^[22]

Film Business Asia also singled out Kim as "the standout performance in a generally impressive first feature by 34-year-old writer-director July Jung, that could have been even better with one more script revision and more animated playing by Bae. Despite that, it's still an involving drama with few dull moments, continually shifting the power balance between the three main protagonists. [...] All of this is a rich concoction that Jung generally brings off. But there are also annoying loose ends that weaken its dramatic impact, [such as] the backgrounds of the three leads are thinly drawn; and the final act has a slightly too manufactured feel. The film could easily lose 10 minutes to its benefit, by shortening or eliminating the repetitive scenes of the girl's beatings."^[23]

Awards and nominations

References

External links

• Official website (Korean)
• A Girl at My Door at the Korean Movie Database
• A Girl at My Door at the Internet Movie Database
• A Girl at My Door at HanCinema