A Girl with Closed Eyes is one of those films that begins with a murder it takes the rest of the film to unravel. After basking in the adoration of fans at a book-reading event, a novelist heads back home. Once he gets indoors, he finds he has a visitor. At the book event, this hooded figure had lurked around, keeping a position just outside of our novelist’s sight.
“You don’t remember me?” the figure asks the now-cowering novelist. Out comes a gun.
While the camera excuses itself and waits outside in the rather lovingly lensed dark, three shots ring out, the last coming a few seconds after the first two. The police arrive almost immediately. Clearly, the blood-splattered killer wants to be caught and has had her wish fulfilled.
Which, of course, leads to one question: Why does this killer of a bestselling novelist want to be caught? Who knows. But even a somnolent viewer can tell that the crime and the wishing to be caught are connected to novelist Jeong Sang-woo’s latest, a supposed biography based on the actual kidnaping of a young girl, titled A Girl with Closed Eyes. This detail proves important when the killer says she is the kidnapped girl whose story has been told by the dead novelist.
It sets off the mystery of Chun Sunyoung’s debut feature, which has premiered at the Busan International Film Festival. The film is a moody delight that, at least initially, wallows happily in well-known tropes of the crime picture, as though trying to pre-empt a viewer who wants to wag her finger at those tropes.
Like in The Silence of the Lambs and many other films, the killer (Minha Kim) has her eyes on a particular police officer (Moon Choi). As with all of Korean master Park Chan-wook’s work, certain scenes are striking and dark-lit. As with any number of cop movies, the assigned officer has a sidekick who has a somewhat goofy and slightly less competent handle on things. And as with more than a handful of murder mysteries, the cop used to live in the same town as the case under investigation. There’s also some Jung Byung-gil and Bong Joon-Ho influence here and there.
As said, the film is keenly aware of what it owes to other projects. A novelist is the victim of a crime, so the screenplay puts Rob Reiner’s 1990 film Misery in the mouth of a character, who says that the case is an easy one, because putting the stalker and a famous novelist together is “like Misery”. Naturally, the case is anything but easy. It is also very different from Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel.
As the story goes along, detail after detail accrete. And little by little, the story moves from a why-do-it to a mix of whodunit and howdunit, sometimes going back to why-do-it or hovering somewhere over all three. This could be pleasurable and it is, to a point. After that point, the twists begin to take the place of story. It starts to seem like the idea is to cram the screenplay full of twists rather than pursue a more natural outcome for the characters introduced in the first act.
Some of these twists work. With the rest, it’s hard to drum up the attention required when one is quickly displaced by another. And yet, there is a lot that manages to be very engaging here, principally the visuals and the performances from Choi and Kim. The screenwriting, also by Chun Sunyoung, is pretty solid, at least before the scarcely believable exposition as to what happened the night of the novelist’s murder.
Notwithstanding, the writer-director-producer clearly has a talent for story and an eye (aided by cinematographer Hyungbin Lee) for great images. Hopefully, she will return for a second feature. And, hopefully, then, she’ll relax a bit and tell a story—sans elaborately twisty gimmicks.
Cast: Minha Kim, Moon Choi, Kiwoo Lee
Director, screenplay, producer Chun Sunyoung
Executive Producers: Soyoung Lee, Myunghoon Kang
Cinematography: Hyungbin Lee
Production Design: Yijin Jung
Editor: Younglim Lee
Music: Younggyu Jang
Sound: Jiyoung Jeong
Production Company: MIND2MIND PICTURES
World Sales: Finecut
Venue: Busan International Film Festival (Korea Cinema Today: Special Premiere)
In Korean
105 minutes