To my knowledge, Ji-won Lee’s only directorial effort to date has never appeared in American theaters apart from festivals and one-off showings. Although this is a fairly recent selection having initially premiered in its native South Korea in October of 2018. At the time that I initially wrote this Japan was the other only country where it garnered a wide theatrical release and I doubt that any other country will follow suit. But then again who needs movie theaters when you have the Internet? The film is currently available on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Plex and the Rakuten Viki site. There may be other sites, but the Internet is too vast for me to list them all. Plus ‘less legitimate’ sources for online streaming tend to come and go erratically, so if you wish to watch this elsewhere you’re on your own. Back when I first searched for a way to watch this film, the Viki site was allowing people to watch this title completely free without having to create an account to login with. This is what I would prefer when it comes to online streaming; access that’s very direct, simple and hassle-free, albeit with regards to the Viki site it did come with one major caveat; advertisements.
Watching this film for free on the Viki site was akin to watching a TV broadcast of the film. Granted once each ad break played to its completion they would go away and I would still have the ability to jump to any portion of the film at any time. Since I didn’t mind a small dose of torture in my life, I triggered all the ad breaks and then tracked back to the beginning of the film in order to watch it as one continuous uninterrupted stream. To not have to do this would’ve cost me money. As for the home media distribution, Nova Media released a Blu-ray copy of the film and I believe that it was held at a handful of university libraries in the US at one point in time. Unfortunately I can’t currently confirm this since worldcat.org has removed ‘Blu-ray’ from its format options for some goofball reason. Regardless of this your best option to watch the film will be through streaming.
There’s probably no better place to start then with the film’s acting, and specifically the performance of Han Ji-min in the title character which was unequivocally amazing. Ji-min’s physical acting, most notably her facial expressions, offered enough to see the brilliance in what she achieved in this film. Ji-min perfectly captured the persona of a woman who had been considerably hardened by a string of difficult life experiences with her poker-faced stoicism. And yet she managed to effortlessly blend this with a more compassionate, sympathetic and perhaps vulnerable visage in her relationship with Kim Ji-eun. Ji-min confidently mastered all the small nuances and mannerisms of the character that allowed her to inject a satisfying amount of personality and humanity into the role. There was the short subtle smirk when being told that she was her mother’s next of kin. There were the sudden bursts of confusion where she openly questioned why she was helping the poor child. There was the rather curt, yet forceful reaction when she was questioned about her mother. There was the massive display of grief when she came to terms on why her mother had left her. There was the rage she expressed towards Joo Mi-kyeong in the film’s climax, as well as the warm, glowing friendly smile that she gave Kim Ji-eun as the film ended. Ji-min made Miss Baek so fascination and intriguing that you couldn’t help but be hooked into the film by the character. This was seriously one of the best acting performances that I’ve ever seen.
In an equally important role, I though Kim Si-ah did a great job as the child suffering from an abusive home life in a performance that supplied the film with a great deal of emotional heft. Much like Ji-min she got the minor details of her performance spot on. For instance I like the way she instinctively raised her arm in defense during her first encounter with Miss Baek which perfectly captured the depths of her fear and despair. Another moment that I enjoyed was the brief look of joy when Si-ah’s character was taken to a carnival. There was never a moment in the film where I didn’t think of Kim Ji-eun as a child and given what happened to the character in the story, I didn’t consider that to be an easy thing to achieve. But ultimately the best thing about Si-ah’s performance was the tender, emotionally wrought relationship that she developed between her character and Miss Baek, which served as the centerpiece for the film. Miss Baek achieved an emotional intensity in this relationship that was so powerful and deeply felt in its warmth that it was hard not to be affected by it, which is a huge credit to both actresses.
The supporting characters clearly had less impact on the film. For the most part they all followed suit with the film’s penchant for modestly expressive physical acting. Kwon So-hyun in the role of Kim Ji-eun’s stepmother, Joo Mi-kyeong, was especially noteworthy with her sheepishly awkward look when accidentally meeting Miss Baek at the massage parlor. She was also good in showing her character’s fear and apprehension when facing the threat of getting caught for her crimes against Kim Ji-eun. Baek Soo-jang was probably the weakest of the performers and apart from perhaps one scene didn’t really command much attention. Generally I thought both characters were a bit underdeveloped and one-dimensional as villains. The reasoning for their torture of Kim Ji-eun was never really well established and made the film somewhat weak from a narrative perspective. Conversely, Jang-seop’s relationship with Miss Baek was far better developed and Lee Hee-joon performed his role with great passion, which at times had him expressing a level of anger that bordered on being unhinged. Granted his role still felt a bit perfunctory as the ‘grand fixer’ for the film’s main conflict. Without Hee-joon’s character the impulsiveness of both Miss Baek and Joo Mi-kyeong would go unchecked resulting in a completely different direction for the story. Despite the clear utility for the character’s existence, Hee-joon managed to show some decent acting talent, especially in his wonderful look of both disgust and frustration at seeing that Miss Baek was involved with the child’s disappearance. Another performance that I really liked was that of Jang-seop’s sister, who provided the film with an additional spark of energy, as well as some modest humor. To me getting good performances from minor characters is a positive reflection of how much thought and effort went in to making the film.
As for the writing, the dialogue was rather jejune and nondescript, although this clearly wasn’t a film that depended on spoken words to express itself. The performers expressed themselves far better through their subtle physical acting than through any other outlet. Simply the way the characters looked at each other would speak volumes about the dynamics of their coexistence. The overall narrative was interesting and generally I liked the use of flashbacks which added some necessary depth to these characters. When it came to its’ ‘heroes’, the film did a great job with the character development and in adequately establishing the character motivations for much of the action. For instance the death of Miss Baek’s mother in the beginning of the film for me is crucial since it triggered memories of her own abuse and made it much more believable for her to comfort Kim Ji-eun.
What I didn’t like about the narrative were the artificial plot mechanisms that appear near the end of the film. It’s hard not to groan at Jang-seop’s declaration that he needed to find evidence against the couple only for him to literally find it less than 2 minutes later in the film. Then there was the ridiculous sequence in which Joo Mi-kyeong kidnapped her own stepchild which lead to the final confrontation at a construction site. Thankful the film’s desire to be a tepid action film during the last 15-20 minutes did not detract too much from it’s overall quality.
The cinematography largely depended on short takes with some modest amount of camera movement. Despite the use of fluid camera movements, the mise-en-scène was excellent and the film showed some excellent artistry in its jump cut transitions. Consider for instance how the film introduced us to Miss Baek. We see a photo of her as a child. Then a character in the next scene speaks her name and then it cuts to her as an adult. Could there have been a more elegant way to express the notion that this is a woman who’s been shaped by her childhood? I also liked the level of detail that the filmmakers captured in their framing. For instance we see a quick shot of Kim Ji-eun clutching onto Miss Beak’s fingers at the beginning of the story which practically symbolized the start of their relationship, to say nothing of the fear that the character had towards Joo Mi-kyeong. The short takes also afforded the film with a rather brisk pace which allowed the film to work in all the necessary character back stories. The use of flashback scenes was well integrated with the story since they often appeared as the memories of the various characters which were showed at times that would make sense for such thoughts to occur. I felt as if the flashback scenes were an attempt to get inside the mental stratosphere of the characters and in some cases such scenes took on an almost haunting presence. The film would even show memories of earlier moments in the film to further show the continuing effect of such moments.
Another pivotal scene came during the interrogation of Baek Soo-jang’s character whereby he revealed that he too was abused as a child. Not only does this completely quell Jang-seop’s anger, but it cast the occurrence of child abuse as a cyclical, systematic social blight. The notion that survivors of child abuse are capable of abusing their own children added additional depth to the character of Miss Baek, in that it allowed one to see her rejection of romantic relationships and of motherhood as the result of a subconscious fear of turning into the same type of monster that her own mother was. In this light it’s possible to view the film’s central relationship as being transformative for both characters. While it did avoid being graphically violent and struck a largely austere yet somber tone in its take on the issue of child abuse, Miss Baek can still be a very grim and brutal film at times. Still for a film that dared to explore the potential for people to overcome the tragic situations in which they find themselves, ultimately it’s a very life-affirming, positive and hopeful film. It’s also a more poetically beautiful film in its embrace of these qualities. This film was simply tremendous.