Ae-ja / <애자> 2009

Directed by: Jeong Gi-hoon / 정기훈
Release date: September 2009

Ae-ja has always been a 청개구리 (green frog, ask a Korean) and she is in constant conflict with authority, including her high school teachers and her mother. Part of her rebelliousness may be because of her mother’s favoritism for Ae-ja’s brother, who has a slight disability. Ten years go by and Ae-ja is now a struggling writer living in Seoul and is as contrary as ever. When she comes home to Busan, she disrupts everything, including her brother’s love life and wedding. When her mother collapses and ends up in the hospital, Ai-ja and her mom are thrown together again and must now re-define their relationship, but it is not a smooth road as her mother shows her chung-kae-gu-ri side as well.

Ae-ja and her mother make amusing characters to watch, especially Ae-ja who constantly shoots herself in the foot but just can’t stop being the head-strong individualist that she is. The hospital scenes got a little repetitive. My take: C

Matchmaker, friend Hyeon-jin, and Ae-ja’s mother peruse

photos of potential candidates for groom for Ae-ja, while Ae-ja sulks

(uncredited, Sa Hyeon-jin, Kim Yeong-ae, and Choi Kang-hee).

A Reason to Live / <오늘> 2011

Directed by: Lee Jeong-hyang, 이정향
Release date: October 2011

The film focuses on the topic of forgiveness. Da-hae lost her fiancé in a motorbike accident and, following the demands of her Catholic faith, she forgave the 15-year-old boy who was the driver in the hit-and-run accident. A year has gone by and she is making a documentary on forgiveness by interviewing a series of victims who have “forgiven” the perpetrators of the crimes against them or their loved ones. She begins to realize that forgiveness may not be such a simple, one-shot done deal. Meanwhile, her “adopted” little sister, Jimin, is suffering at the hands of a violent and abusive father and is having her own issues with forgiveness.

A very talky film. There is little action, beyond the climbing of a long flight of stairs, and some rather ugly violence when Jimin is being beaten up by her family. I found the heavy infusion of Catholicism, the struggles of victims to get closure after granting “forgiveness”, and the heavy violence of Jimin’s family depressing. There was a lot of repetition of themes and scenes, and a lot of bopping back and forth between past and present and dream scenes. The talkiness of the film, a lot of it being the interviews for the documentary being made, did not capturing my interest. My take: DD

Jimin and Da-hae, with all Da-hae’s film gear, set off to do an interview.