Left Behind

“Isn’t this a total comedy? It’s like TV melodrama,” hollers Ga-eun (Han Soo-woo) as she freaks out at a family lunch at the beginning of Left Behind. She does have a point there: with all its alcohol-fuelled name-calling, hysterical hair-pulling and teary eulogies towards the dead and dear mother in the sky, the film does smack of soap opera. But rather than peddling such tropes, the Le Fresnoy-educated cineaste Jéro Yun has appropriated them to spice up his engaging and sturdy chamber piece about the tangled-up anger and long-lost love among three estranged siblings and the husband of the eldest.

It’s perhaps apt that the end credits begin with a statement that “no generative AI was used” in the production of the film, as Left Behind is indeed low in artifice but high in emotional intelligence. Filmed in old-school Academy ratio and moving along with its mix of simple medium shots and close-ups, the film follows Jun’s previous outing -– an hour-long documentary about death called Breath —  with a world premiere at the JEONJU International Film Festival.

Compared to the film which brought Yun acclaim on the festival circuit with films exploring the plight of North Korean refugees – the ACID Cannes entry Mrs B., A North Korean Woman (2016), the Busan opener Beautiful Days (2018), and the Berlinale Generations title Fighter (2021) – Left Behind is admittedly a piece of modest family drama devoid of a grand social narrative as a backdrop. The only link between this film and Yun’s previous efforts is probably protagonist Ga-eun’s background. The only character with a name in the film, she is an exile of sorts, a frustrated filmmaker who can’t regain her bearings in South Korea after spending years abroad.

Once considered the Next Big Thing in Korean independent cinema with a prize-winning debut, Ga-eun chugs along as a skint and jaded lecturer, now largely forgotten by her peers and mocked by the smattering of young students she teaches as a part-time lecturer. This furious sense of failure feeds into her toxic interactions with her family, which is laid out in a tense 15-minute showdown at the beginning of Left Behind. Arriving late and completely plastered to a lunch designed to reconcile Ga-eun and her siblings with their womanising, verbally abusive father (Park Chul-min) – with whom they are locked in a lawsuit, over his ownership of their dying mother’s assets – Ga-eun provokes the old man into a near frenzy before he trashes the room and storms out.

After this prologue, Yun cuts to sometime later when mom is already dead, with the siblings again meeting up to resolve their issues. Unfolding in one afternoon, the tribulations of each of the other characters – all unnamed – are gradually revealed, especially the revelation that Ga-eun has inherited $90,000 from her mother.

While not exactly in desperate need of money, the elder sister (Kim Yoon-seo) struggles with the sense of being overlooked for the efforts she paid to attend to her sick mother when she was alive. Her meek, good-natured husband (Lee Tae-kyu) can only look on in despair over not being able to have a child with her. The second brother (Kang Seok-chul), meanwhile, is a twice-divorced manchild trying to get rich with his crypto schemes, and he keeps nagging Ga-eun about sharing her spoils as he gets increasingly drunk.

Bolstered by powerful performances from his cast, Yun paints a family of sibling rivalry that ebbs and flows in its form and intensity. Just like most blood relationships, the protagonists in Left Behind treat each other with a bizarre mix of cordiality, contempt and compassion. The siblings may be discussing practical matters calmly at one moment and then literally at each other’s throats the next, before sitting down for dinner. Their awkwardness with each other is heightened by Sung Jae-hyun’s sound design: by magnifying the low hum of the ventilation or the noise of food being fiddled and consumed, he highlights the silences punctuating the characters’ emotional outbursts. Modest it might be, but Left Behind offers a nuanced portrait of people seeking reparations, revenge and reconciliation from those they love and loathe in equal measures.

Director, screenwriter, producer, cinematography, editing: Jéro Yun
Cast: Han Soo-woo, Kim Yoon-seo, Lee Tae-kyu, Kang Seok-chul, Park Chul-min
Music: Woojoo
Sound: Sung Jae-hyun
Production company: K Plus Y
Venue: JEONJU International Film Festival (Korean Cinema)
In Korean
80 minutes