Her ensuing psychic collapse happens in stages, and once again, Kim is by her side, even accompanying her to a Christian prayer meeting (this after Shin-ae had emphatically rejected a church member’s first invitation to join the congregation) and then supporting her in her abrupt and utter supplication to the religion.Īnd he is supplicant to her. Suddenly Shin-ae is not merely a harried single mother with a slightly demented suitor but a shattered woman coping with the disappearance - and then the dreadful post-mortem discovery - of her beloved, life-sustaining son. This cheerful fixation could be the stuff of an edgy romantic comedy (most romance in South Korean cinema being edgy) but then Secret Sunshine turns - boy, does it turn. He seems content to function as an (essentially atrophied) appendage. For all of his bluster, Kim is something of a blank, and his parasitic attachment to Shin-ae runs deeper than a mere crush. His conversation, which is accelerated and endless, is peppered with the sort of synapse-quick non-sequiturs that one would be better to hold in - in addition to the very real problems of securing employment and settling her son at a new school, Shin-ae is subjected to a stranger’s random neural firings.Ĭertainly, Song, who demonstrated phenomenal comic timing (and real physical gifts) in his mock-heroic roles for Bong, is funny in the part, but there’s more to it than that. He’s also one of those people who don’t possess any sort of filter between their brains and their mouths. In North American parlance, Kim is a geek, a kind of overgrown adolescent (his apartment is a disaster area) who dresses shabbily, eats sloppily and delights in making sexual innuendos with his friends. His affections are not exactly reciprocated, but as Shin-ae is entirely alone (save for her son, whom Kim makes a calculated show of doting on), she’s unable to really fend him off.īecause Secret Sunshine is so patient in revealing its shape and central concerns, it’s difficult to get a read on Kim’s character - or Song’s performance. Learning that Shin-ae’s husband (who was from Miryang) is deceased, he attempts to insinuate himself into her life, spouting advice - much of it unsolicited - and offering to help her integrate into the community in any way possible. As the film opens, he’s offering her and her young son a ride into town in the wake of their car trouble. In Secret Sunshine, Song plays Kim Jong-chan, a lifelong resident of the titular small town - Miryang - that Jeon’s Shin-ae (tragically) chooses for her splintered family’s relocation. #Quaik chang kang serial#Song is by no means an obscure actor, having appeared in two very fine films by his countryman Bong Joon-ho: Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok, 2003), in which he played a naïve rural detective struggling to apprehend South Korea’s first publicly acknowledged serial killer and also the wildly popular A+ B-movie The Host (Gwoemul, 2006), which pitted his dimly affable Seoul snack-bar employee against a giant bipedal mutant trout. One hopes, though, that similar consideration will be accorded her co-star, Song Kang-ho. the otherwise awesome Daniel Day-Lewis in the last ten minutes of There Will Be Blood).Īs Secret Sunshine’s reputation grows (a North American theatrical release will hopefully be forthcoming) so too will the legend of Jeon’s performance. The character does not escape unscathed, but for all the complex and heightened emotions she’s asked to express (sometimes at the same time) Jeon’s performance remains utterly (miraculously?) unblemished by any trace of thespian excess, a malady that can infect even the finest and most fearless actors (i.e. Surely, this was a prize well-deserved: perhaps more than any film in recent memory (even more than the works of that wry sadist Lars von Trier) Secret Sunshine puts its heroine through the proverbial wringer. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Jeon Do-yean was awarded the best actress award for her role as a mother grieving over the death of her child in South Korean director (and former politician) Lee Chang-Dong’s Secret Sunshine (Milyang).
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