Release date: October 2011
High-school student Wan-deuk
is angry and rebellious and keeps to himself. His father, a hunchback, should
have been a talented professional dancer but instead must eke out a living as an
itinerant comic dancer. The complications keep coming – his neighbor turns out
to be his iconoclastic teacher, Dong-ju; the sudden reappearance of his birth
mother who is a Filipino guest worker in Korea, and so on – but Wan-deuk finds
an inner strength and sense of fairness in himself that not only guides him but
begins to win him supporters, including the attention of the hottest girl in
his class.
As well as a being a bildungsroman, the film deals with a whole series of topical issues of discrimination,
such as discrimination against the disabled and against foreign guest-workers –
topical but not preachy with a good leavening of humor. The acting was
especially flawless. The film was a little slow paced and could have used
tighter editing.
My take: 5 stars!
Distressed by her worn shoes,
Wan-deuk takes his new-found
mother to a store and buys her some patent-leather
pumps …
and claims her as his mother to the nosey shopkeeper
(Jasmine Lee, Yoo
Ah-in, unaccredited).
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