In praise of Youn Yuh-jung – Kore­an cinema’s most endur­ing star

West­ern audi­ences may only have become aware of Kore­an actor Youn Yuh-jung when she won an Oscar ear­li­er this year for her per­for­mance as the can­tan­ker­ous yet lov­able grand­moth­er, Soon­ja, in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari. How­ev­er, the vet­er­an per­former has appeared in many clas­sic Kore­an films over the past 50 years, and was recent­ly award­ed the country’s high­est cul­tur­al hon­our, the Geumg­wan Order of Cul­tur­al Mer­it. In cel­e­bra­tion of her var­ied career, this year’s Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val has pro­grammed a ret­ro­spec­tive of her finest work.

The jew­el in the programme’s crown is the recent restora­tion of Kim Ki-young’s Woman of Fire which cat­a­pult­ed Youn into the pub­lic eye back in 1971. A tor­rid melo­dra­ma, it was the first of sev­er­al remakes Kim made of his own ear­li­er film, The House­maid. Youn was cast in the lead role of Myeong-ja, a rur­al naïf who finds a job in the city as a domes­tic ser­vant to bour­geois cou­ple Dong-shik (Namkoong Won) and Jeong-suk (Jeon Gye-hyeon). As well as tend­ing to the family’s chick­en farm – the sex­ing of chicks will no doubt call to mind a sim­i­lar scene in Minari – Jeong-suk tasks Myeong-ja with keep­ing an eye on her hus­band, who she sus­pects of phi­lan­der­ing with a young singer.

Myeong-ja is unable to resist Dong-sik’s drunk­en advances her­self and soon the house is a seething pit of ven­om, enforced abor­tions, black­mail, and worse. Youn is won­der­ful as Myeong-ja, able to turn on a dime from inno­cent coun­try hick to con­niv­ing seduc­tress. Kim sup­pos­ed­ly cast her for her uncon­ven­tion­al, mod­ern beau­ty, but it is her inscrutable eyes that make her so enig­mat­ic. By the end of the film Myeong-ja is clear­ly crazed, but Youn man­ages to retain enough con­trol that you’re con­flict­ed, ques­tion­ing your judge­ment of her, enthralled by the chal­lenge of under­stand­ing her inten­tions even while the events become ever more ludi­crous and vicious, sat­u­rat­ed in Kim’s lurid reds and blues.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see Woman of Fire pro­grammed along­side Im Sang-soo’s supreme­ly styl­ish 2010 remake of The House­maid. It was a minor sup­port­ing role in Im’s 2003 film A Good Lawyer’s Wife (also play­ing at the fes­ti­val) that marked the begin­ning of Youn’s return to promi­nence after she gave up act­ing in the mid-’70s and emi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca with her hus­band, the singer Jo Young-nam.

Youn returned to Korea and took up act­ing again in the late ​’80s after their mar­riage end­ed, but the soci­etal stig­ma attached to divorce pre­vent­ed her from being offered sig­nif­i­cant roles for sev­er­al years. In A Good Lawyer’s Wife, she steals her scenes as the forth­right moth­er of the epony­mous lawyer, par­tic­u­lar­ly amus­ing in a can­did dis­cus­sion of her inten­tions for sex­u­al ful­fil­ment after the death of her hus­band. Her role in Im’s remake of The House­maid offers less humour but is sim­i­lar­ly compelling.

In this instance, Youn plays an old­er house­maid, Miss Cho, tasked with man­ag­ing the work of a new younger woman, Eun-yi, played by Jeon Do-yeon, who will become the composer’s con­cu­bine. Miss Cho has quite a com­pli­cat­ed part to play in the house­hold machi­na­tions, both inform­ing on Eun-yi’s trans­gres­sions and then encour­ag­ing her flight before things spi­ral out of control.

It’s an excel­lent and nuanced turn from Youn, who at first dis­plays poise and thin­ly-veiled con­tempt before she soft­ens a lit­tle, and the audi­ence comes to recog­nise this woman’s flinty resilience and her increas­ing intol­er­ance of her amoral employ­ers. This bal­ance of tough­ness and warmth per­vades many of Youn’s most cel­e­brat­ed roles – from the feisty, dan­ger­ous lovers of her ear­ly films to the charm­ing direct­ness of Minari, The House­maid, and anoth­er film select­ed as part of the ret­ro­spec­tive, E J‑yong’s strik­ing and strange The Bac­chus Lady.

Fol­low­ing the exploits of an age­ing pros­ti­tute, So-Young (pun intend­ed), who has a rep­u­ta­tion for help­ing elder­ly men find some after­noon sat­is­fac­tion, the film begins as a gen­tle com­e­dy-dra­ma about out­casts. Then, mid-way through, it trans­forms into a much dark­er reflec­tion on the plight of Korea’s des­ti­tute elder­ly pop­u­la­tion. It’s a tonal shift that might desta­bilise a film with less of a steady hand on its tiller, but Youn hap­pi­ly moves from the sly wink need­ed to pick up pen­sion­ers in the park to some­thing more som­bre and mourn­ful with a deft­ness that feels com­plete­ly nat­ur­al. It’s this abil­i­ty that sees her con­tin­ue to make con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing work, and long may it continue.

The Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val runs 4 – 19 Novem­ber. For more info vis­it kore​an​film​.co​.uk