Strong women, dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies and a sen­tient car at the 2022 Lon­don Kore­an Film Festival

The 17^th Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val did not get off to the hap­pi­est start, not owing to any­thing with the event itself, but because of what had hap­pened over 5000 miles away just a few days before.

The hor­rif­ic crowd crush at Itae­won, one of South Korea’s worst-ever dis­as­ters, weighed heav­i­ly over the open­ing night of an event meant to cel­e­brate the best of the nation’s film indus­try. The post-screen­ing recep­tion had already been can­celled, and the audi­ence were asked to join in a moment of silence for the tragedy’s victims.

After this som­bre begin­ning, fes­ti­val-goers were bad­ly in need of some escapism – the open­ing film, Alienoid, cer­tain­ly deliv­ered. With direc­tor Choi Dong-Hoon inspired by the likes of Back to the Future, laugh­ter quick­ly filled the audi­to­ri­um as view­ers were plunged into a world of sci-fi, mag­ic and slap­stick comedy.

The plot, which involved aliens being impris­oned in human bod­ies, was insane yet strange­ly enjoy­able, and was made sur­pris­ing­ly heart­warm­ing by robots Guard and Thun­der (both played by Kim Woo-bin) and their human ​‘daugh­ter’ Ean (Kim Tae-ri, best known for Park Chan-wook’s The Hand­maid­en) who they rescued/​kidnapped as a baby in 14^th cen­tu­ry Korea. Come for the cool fight sequences, stay for the ass-kick­ing young woman raised by her two dys­func­tion­al robot dads.

In fact, par­ent­hood in all its messy, infu­ri­at­ing glo­ry became an extreme­ly com­mon theme through­out the fes­ti­val. Case in point: Kwon Soo-Kyung’s Stel­lar: A Mag­i­cal Ride, in which debt col­lec­tor Yeong-bae (Son Ho-jun) finds him­self rat­tling around in his recent­ly-deceased estranged father’s ancient Hyundai Stel­lar, chas­ing a drug-filled Lam­borgh­i­ni while him­self being chased by its dis­grun­tled crim­i­nal own­ers. Oh, and his girl­friend is preg­nant and the Stel­lar is almost cer­tain­ly pos­sessed by his dad’s spir­it, pro­vid­ing a sur­pris­ing­ly hardy emo­tion­al core amidst the tor­na­do of black comedy.

Mean­while, those who pre­fer the cathar­sis of hor­ror might have pre­ferred Kang Dong-hun’s Con­tort­ed. Draw­ing on every­thing from Greek tragedy to Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, Con­tort­ed sees a trou­bled fam­i­ly move into a sus­pi­cious­ly cheap rur­al house. Jump­scares go bump in the night, the archi­tec­ture doesn’t make sense, and you real­ly, real­ly don’t want to know what’s lurk­ing in the pad­locked shed… Star­ring a spine-chill­ing per­for­mance from Seo Young-hee, Con­tort­ed explores psy­chosis, inter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma and the worst things adults are capa­ble of doing to their children.

Along­side par­ent­hood, view­ers expe­ri­enced a vari­ety of insights into the expe­ri­ences of Kore­an women and girls. Some of these came from the festival’s own brand of time trav­el: a look back at the career of one of Kore­an cinema’s most acclaimed actress­es, Kang Soo-yeon, fol­low­ing her untime­ly pass­ing ear­li­er this year at the age of 55. Clear­ly feel­ing that a trib­ute was long over­due, the LKFF put togeth­er a quin­tet of her best roles.

One of these was in Im Sang-soo’s Girls’ Night Out (1998) which stars Kang, Jin Hee-kyung and Kim Yeo-jin as flat­shar­ing gal pals Ho-jeong, Yeon and Soon – all refresh­ing­ly com­plex and ful­ly-realised char­ac­ters with careers, hob­bies and, yes, messy rela­tion­ships. Sex­u­al fan­tasies, mas­tur­ba­tion, sex toys and sex itself are all dis­cussed open­ly and frankly: at one point, Ho-jeong turns to Yeon and asks, ​“What do you think about your vagi­na?” Yeon lat­er breaks her arm try­ing to get a bet­ter look at said vagi­na and if that hasn’t con­vinced you to watch this film, sure­ly noth­ing else will. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Im Kwon-taek’s Come Come Come Upward (1989), in which Kang plays a trou­bled Bud­dhist nun, was a much less pos­i­tive view­ing expe­ri­ence. While Kang’s act­ing is indeed superb, unfor­tu­nate­ly Male Film­mak­er Syn­drome strikes again as with­out warn­ing the film shoves in not one, but two sud­den and gra­tu­itous­ly vio­lent rape scenes, one of which is fol­lowed by Kang’s char­ac­ter hap­pi­ly set­tling down to start a fam­i­ly with the rapist.

Thank­ful­ly anoth­er of the programme’s high­lights took a very dif­fer­ent approach to sex­u­al vio­lence. The debut fea­ture of writer and direc­tor Kim Jung-eun, Gyeong-ah’s Daugh­ter stars Kim Jung-young as the tit­u­lar Gyeong-ah and Ha Yoon-kyung as her daugh­ter Yeon-su, whose life falls apart when her ex posts a sex­u­al­ly explic­it video of her online. Strik­ing­ly, in the film’s even­ly paced but nev­er bor­ing nar­ra­tive, Kim Jung-eun refus­es to focus on the per­pe­tra­tor for one sec­ond longer than she absolute­ly has to.

Instead, the focus is entire­ly on the impact his revenge porn has on Yeon-su’s life and men­tal health – and on her rela­tion­ship with her moth­er. Pow­ered by excel­lent per­for­mances from both actors, Gyeong-ah’s Daugh­ter is a bold yet under­stat­ed exam­i­na­tion of how women can both suf­fer under and uphold patri­ar­chal cul­tures. But it’s also a pow­er­ful reminder of how strong we can be and of, despite patriarchy’s best efforts, our capac­i­ty for survival.

How­ev­er, the best female-cen­tric entry on the pro­gramme was The Hill of Secrets, itself the fea­ture debut of writer and direc­tor Lee Ji-eun and part of this year’s Gen­er­a­tion Kplus selec­tion at the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. Per­fect for fans of Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman, the film fol­lows 12-year-old Myung-eun (Moon Seung-ah), a zeal­ous fifth-grad­er who’s des­per­ate to please her kind-heart­ed teacher and embar­rassed by her seem­ing­ly uncar­ing parents.

As time goes on she strug­gles to keep her home life sep­a­rate from her heav­i­ly curat­ed school per­sona, and learns valu­able lessons about not judg­ing books by their cov­ers, and the impor­tance of authen­tic self-expres­sion. Bring­ing the fes­ti­val back down to earth after the sur­re­al mad­ness of Alienoid and Stel­lar, Lee’s cre­ation is a gen­tle, stripped-back and often painful­ly authen­tic com­ing-of-age sto­ry, anchored by a tru­ly superb per­for­mance from its young star.

The above, of course, is just a thin slice of the many fea­tures and short films that made up the Lon­don Kore­an Film Festival’s pro­gramme this year. Crime dra­mas, romances, films about film­mak­ing, ground­break­ing queer doc­u­men­taries – the list goes on. But one thing unit­ing many of these films is that they leave you with at least the tini­est ker­nel of hope, if not for the future then at least for humanity’s abil­i­ty to sur­vive, cre­ate, laugh and love, no mat­ter what comes next. (Except for Con­tort­ed because, let’s be hon­est, you’d nev­er sur­vive that house.) And between the col­lec­tive trau­ma of Itae­won, and the bru­tal cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis unfold­ing here in the UK, we could all use a lit­tle extra faith in human­i­ty right now.