South Korea
2017 104 mins OV Korean Subtitles : English
Official selection
Busan International Film Festival 2017, New York Asian Film Festival 2018
“Pulls off the rare feat of straddling the stark social realities of Korea's indie cinema and the entertaining sheen of its commercial films... Vibrant and fun, yet always thoughtful and often poignant”
Pierce Conran, SCREEN ANARCHYThirty-something Miso (Lee “Esom” Som) lives day to day, paycheck by paycheck, as a housekeeper. Crammed in a tiny, barely heated apartment, and whiskey and cigarettes are her only two comforts in life. When the government decides to double the price of cigarettes, her entire budget goes off the rails. What to do? Kiss her vices goodbye… or give up her home? The solution is self-evident, if unusual: Miso embraces homelessness! And doing so, she also chooses to reconnect with her former school bandmates, who offer what hospitality they can. And thus begins Miso’s strange voyage through other people’s lives, as well as through the rearview mirror of her own, alongside South Korea’s contemporary social landscape!
In this surprising first feature, filmmaker Jeon Go-woon (best known for co-writing
COLLECTIVE INVENTION and
FAMILYHOOD, also seen at Fantasia in 2016) subtly reinvents the conventions of slacker cinema, in the form of a dramatic comedy with a strong feminine perspective. Through a brilliant episodic structure, leading Miso from one social environment to the next, Jeon paints a complex and tragi-comic portrait of South Korea today – its class consciousness, the ambitions that drive it, and the characters that populate it, whether they are family men and women, exhausted careerists or willful, sympathetic slackers. Through all of this, Jeon makes us discover Miso, a fantastic character whose non-conformism becomes truly inspiring; a form of resistance against the obliterating bulldozer of social pressure and conventions. Brilliantly portrayed by young superstar Esom, we promise you she will inspire more than one to live life to the beat of their own drum – whether it involves whiskey and cigarettes, or not!
–Ariel Esteban Cayer
