A tip for international distributors after a catchier title for Where Would You Like To Go?: it could well be renamed “A Feature Film About Love”. The reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love is very much intentional, as the late Polish filmmaker’s shadow looms large over Kim Hee-jung’s fifth feature. A graduate of the renowned Lódz Film School, which counts auteurs like Kieslowski and Andrzej Wajda among its alumni, the South Korean director Kim freely adapts her idol’s iconography and themes. A character in her film even namechecks him and muses over his philosophy of human mortality and the visual symbolism in his work.
Admirers of films such as Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, Three Colours: Blue and Blind Chance will recall Kieslowski in a deadly drowning accident, a young widow grieving over the loss of her husband, a boy wooing an older and worldier woman, and a discussion about sliding-door moments in people’s lives. Incorporating such influences into her film in the most seamless and graceful manner possible, Kim and her cinematographers Park Jung-hoon and Artur Zulawski also appropriate Kieslowski’s trademark greenish hues and chiaroscuro lighting as a visual signal for the characters’ spiritual turmoil and awakening.
Still, Where Would You Like To Go? is anything but merely derivative in its delicately humane and poignant relationship drama. Based on a short story by renowned Korean author Kim Ae-ran, Kim Hee-jung’s film thrives on its steadily paced storytelling, a finely written script, and suitably subdued performances by TV drama star Park Ha-seon and the 14-year-old Moon Woo-jin.
Kim’s previous semi-autobiographical outing, A French Woman, saw the director adapting her own homecoming from Europe (after seven years in Poland, then another in France) into an uneven genre-blending yarn. With Where Would You Like To Go? she returns to an idiom she’s obviously more comfortable with, and the film is bound to travel farther and wider than its predecessor. It celebrated its world premiere as the closing film of the Jeonju International Film Festival.
Myeong-ji (Park) is a bookstore owner whose stable, contented life is suddenly turned upside down when her schoolteacher husband, Do-kyeong (played in flashbacks by Jeon Suk-ho), dies while trying to drag a student to safety in the water. Hit by this sudden bereavement, she falls into a long stupor, until her cousin gets in touch and invites her to stay in her apartment in Warsaw (replacing Edinburgh in Kim Ae-ran’s original short story). Haunted by memories of her happy marriage and feeling smothered by her in-laws’ benign attention, she sells her business and leaves for Poland, where she reconnects with Hyeon-seok (Kim Nam-hee), a fellow history student and best friend from her university days.
As they spend time visiting parks and historical landmarks, long-suppressed feelings slowly break into the open, and the pair reflect on how their lives might have worked out differently if they had made different choices in the past. Kim’s thoughtful use of bright cityscapes and dimly-lit interiors provides an effective backdrop for two characters’ myriad conversations about their regrets, loss and helplessness towards the trajectories of their existence. The two leads are excellent in articulating their characters’ pent-up emotions, with Park’s nuanced turn being the more impressive, as she slowly and gradually reveals Myeong-ji’s conflicted emotions and her acute awareness of the bigger things in play in life.
Meanwhile, back in Korea, similarly complicated feelings befall Hae-su (Moon), the best friend of the impoverished student who drowned alongside Do-kyeong. A middle-class loner who never managed to blend in at school, Hae-su’s loss of his only confidante in life hits him hard – but then he begins to take control of his own tragic rite of passage by ravigating his feelings towards his friend’s elder sister Ji-eun.
Having long nurtured a crush on her, Hae-su pulls out all the stops to relight her joie de vivre and take care of her material well-being. A former child actor transitioning into more grown-up roles, Moon delivers a measured performance as a boy stepping up to the duties of adulthood, his physical gestures and delivery of lines reflecting the character’s mix of confidence and confusion about what his aspirations might entail.
Defying its title, Where Would You Like To Go? is less about destinations and closures than it is about the epiphanies her protagonists experience as they embark on their journeys for redemption. Cho Han-wool’s tight editing keeps the dual storylines comprehensible, distinct yet intertwined at the right places; Marzena Majcher’s score bubbles along without being overtly intrusive. Modest in its scale but sturdy in its storytelling, the film leads the viewer to that point where, according to Myeong-ji’s Siri-bot, “life is anything between sadness and beauty”. An apt description, perhaps, of the range of emotions and imagery on show here.
Director, screenwriter: Kim Hee-jung
Cast: Park Ha-seon, Kim Nam-hee, Jeon Suk-ho, Moon Woo-jin
Producer: Yoo Byung-ok
Directors of photography: Park Jung-hoon, Artur Zurawski
Editor: Cho Han-wool
Production designer: Kim Seung-kyung
Music : Marzena Majcher
Sound designers: Kim Pil-soo, Chung Min-joo
Production companies: Invent Stone
Venue: Jeonju International Film Festival (Closing Film)
In Korean, Polish
104 minutes
