A Girl at My Door

Rur­al South Korea is the set­ting for July Jung’s coura­geous and qui­et­ly con­fronta­tion­al debut fea­ture which boasts a pair of aston­ish­ing­ly nuanced per­for­mances. The film con­cerns itself with the rot that eats away at human­i­ty both on a per­son­al and soci­etal lev­el, with its depic­tion of a small, strug­gling com­mu­ni­ty debased by cor­rup­tion, prej­u­dice and the moral con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of an abused and neglect­ed child. Eschew­ing sen­sa­tion­al­ism for a rig­or­ous­ly restrained approach to issues which become increas­ing­ly com­bustible, A Girl at My Door undu­lates between hope and despair.

An ini­tial­ly unspec­i­fied scan­dal sees tal­ent­ed young police offi­cer Young-nam (the mes­mer­ic Doona Bae) packed off to a fish­ing vil­lage where she’s installed as their new sta­tion chief. Although she’s view­ing events through a fog of func­tion­ing alco­holism, her new charges are an unde­sir­able bunch whose own fail­ings are glar­ing­ly appar­ent. Many are equal­ly soz­zled, they’re just less adept at hid­ing it. As she dri­ves into town, Young-nam spies shy, scrag­gly child Do-hee (Sae-ron Kim, in a per­for­mance of con­sid­er­able com­plex­i­ty and matu­ri­ty), crouch­ing at the road­side, almost as if she’s anx­ious­ly await­ing her arrival.

Resplen­dent in her pro­fes­sion­al­ism and sport­ing a sleek bob, Young-nam cuts a con­trast­ing­ly dig­ni­fied fig­ure to those around her and gets to work stand­ing up to dis­or­der­ly men, not least Yong-ha (Sae-byeok Song), the swin­ish step­fa­ther of the afore­men­tioned 14-year-old wretch. He’s a low-lev­el thug who has, nev­er­the­less, cap­i­talised on the area’s age­ing pop­u­la­tion – exploit­ing des­per­ate for­eign work­ers and the lack of local com­pe­ti­tion – to become the town’s unde­serv­ing, unchecked top dog. His stepdaughter’s sit­u­a­tion is a tru­ly sor­ry one: for years she’s been relent­less­ly and open­ly bru­talised by Yong-ha and his elder­ly, com­pa­ra­bly chaot­ic moth­er, as well as her peers (her moth­er has flown this most unap­peal­ing of coops).

Riff­ing del­i­cate­ly on the tra­di­tion­al small-town cor­rup­tion detec­tive sto­ry, Jung uses the frame­work to show females con­tro­ver­sial­ly tak­ing on the crooked, patri­ar­chal sta­tus quo, and to explore issues around child pro­tec­tion. She has also craft­ed a moral­i­ty tale that address­es the fear that doing the right thing in a sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tion might trig­ger unwant­ed scruti­ny, vio­lence or per­son­al per­se­cu­tion. Young-nam acts as the village’s unasked-for wake-up call, stick­ing her nose where it isn’t wel­come. Con­se­quent­ly, her worst night­mare plays out. She expe­ri­ences not only misog­y­ny and sus­pi­cion, but has her sex­u­al­i­ty exposed and cru­el­ly bran­dished before her like a shame­ful, dis­taste­ful weapon, in a coun­try where being gay remains taboo.

Although A Girl at My Door far from shouts about its achieve­ments, these speak for them­selves: for instance, its will­ing­ness to acknowl­edge the end result of abuse is rare in that a young vic­tim might ulti­mate­ly become capa­ble of vio­lence them­selves, while it posits that a bat­tered child can manip­u­late the sys­tem and still be effec­tive­ly inno­cent. And that this small but pow­er­ful film retains its gen­tle­ness and com­pas­sion in the face of the bleak­est of sub­jects makes it all the more remarkable.