Arriving at the tail end of a creatively fertile and financially lucrative decade or so for South Korean entertainment, with cinema being a key aspect of this boom, the domestic films presented at the 2023 Jeonjun International Film Festival took on an extra level of significance. It was hard not to look at these selections, mostly feature debuts, as a bellwether of this influential national film industry’s development over the upcoming years.
The trials and tribulations of the film industry itself were the focus of some of the Korean competition’s best entries, such as Yoo Heong-jun’s Regardless of Us. At once mundane and elliptical, the film is most effective in its opening stretch, which sees middle-aged actress Hwa-ryeong (Cho Hyunjin) being visited at a hospital by colleagues from her most recent production, including the director and producer. She’s recovering from a stroke, and her condition seems to enable other people to open up about their own feelings toward her and themselves.
As her visitors reflect on life, Hwa-ryeong struggles to recall any details about the film they worked on, and each person who sees her seems to have their own interpretation of the most basic elements of its story. Regardless of Us’s hospital-set section is followed by an apparently unrelated second half concerning a different retired actress who’s struggling to maintain her relationship with her teenage children. A theme emerges, albeit vaguely, concerning the way that narrative can inform someone’s beliefs about their world and identity.
As evidenced by the film’s gentle pacing, static black-and-white cinematography, and even the slow zoom that closes it, Yoo was clearly influenced to a huge extent by Hong San-soo. Though Regardless of Us lacks much of the subtlety and naturalistic warmth of Hong’s best work, its meandering, existential dialogue and sensitive performances keep it compelling throughout.
Equally interested in the interplay between films and everyday life was Park Joongha’s Small Fry, an intimate, wryly amusing drama that sends up clashing artistic temperaments with an observant eye. Heading out on a fishing trip to a remote reservoir, an egotistical director’s (Seonghwan) efforts to unwind are disrupted by an enthusiastic YouTuber (Kim Howon, winner of the festival’s best actor prize) who sets up his equipment nearby and begins filming new sponsored content for his popular fishing-based channel. Following the arrival of the director’s actress friend (Lee Chae-young), the trio are soon revealed to be professional collaborators with a complex history, and a number of lingering tensions that have gone unresolved.
The shifting emotional dynamics of the group are orchestrated carefully, as the film, which was written by Park and Kim, regularly reveals new nuances in its characters and how they relate to each other. What emerges is an engagingly humane portrait of creativity on the margins of success, one that’s keenly attentive to the gulf separating performance and reality.
Yun Suik’s Heavy Snow also situates itself close to the world of filmmaking, with a notably bleaker view of the toll that acting can take on an individual’s psyche. A teen star of a popular TV show, Suan (Han Haein) strikes up a friendship with an introverted girl (Han Sohee) at her performing arts high school who plans to shoot her own films, insisting that she lacks the conventional good looks to succeed in front of camera. The pair’s emotional connection soon blossoms into a romance, as they head out on a series of road trips to engage in some low-level juvenile delinquency and surf the choppy waters of a remote mountainous region.
Thematically reminiscent of Mulholland Drive and Persona in its exploration of performance, projection, and same-sex desires, Heavy Snow uses the haziness of its setting and the occasional off-kilter shot or impressionistic image to give a dream-like feel to its central relationship. Its emotional through line might not be developed fully, but it does succeed in casting doubt on the reality of events in an intriguing way, illustrating the inherent strangeness of adolescent angst.
Another melancholic coming-of-age tale focusing on a burgeoning relationship between two teenage girls, Han Jay’s No Heaven but Love features an enigmatic, moving performance from Squid Game star Lee Yoo-mi as a troubled orphan and food waitress named Ye-ji. Told primarily from the point of view of Ju-young (Park Soo-yeon), who’s struggling with her mother’s expectations and with cruel treatment at the hands of her fellow taekwondo students and their coach, the 1999-set film sees her perspective on her own life shift as she grows closer to Ye-Ji, who’s taken into their family as part of a foster care scheme.
Examining childhood trauma, cycles of abuse, and the systemic prejudices of South Korean society in the late 1990s, No Heaven but Love veers a little too far into sentimentality as events escalate toward the end, but its more understated moments are undeniably affecting. It’s an emotional depiction of forbidden queer love in defiance of social norms, set against a backdrop of economic crisis and Y2K anxiety, and as such it might well have the most commercial appeal of any homegrown film at this year’s Jeonjun International Film Festival.
Whether any of the emerging filmmakers who exhibited their work at this year’s festival will make the leap to mainstream success or cinephile cult status remains to be seen, but the amount of technical prowess and confident idiosyncrasy on display did offer at the very least a positive prognosis for South Korea’s independent film culture.
The Jeonju International Film Festival ran from April 27—May 6.
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