Prior to the 21st century, South Korean movies were a near non-factor on the international scene. In the last two decades, however, a number of South Korean directors and films have caused a critical stir and won prizes internationally. Some of the best directors, like Lee Chang-dong, made chilling and mysterious psychological dramas—like “Poetry” (2010) and “Burning” (2018)—that remain indelible. Director Bong Joon-ho’s satiric tragi-comedy “Parasite” (2019) was virtually the first homegrown film that was both critically well received and a worldwide hit. The film was deluged with honors that included winning the best picture, best director, best original screenplay, and best international feature film at the 92nd Academy Awards, marking the first time a non-English language film won best picture and the first time a Korean film ever won at the Oscars. And the prolific, perceptive Hong-Sang-soo’s films appear almost every year at the New York Film Festival like “The Woman Who Ran” (2020) and “The Novelist’s Film” (2020), and in their understated, minimalist manner can at moments be memorable.
South Korea may still carry a legacy of patriarchy and misogyny, but a number of gifted female film directors have suddenly appeared. One of them is filmmaker Hong Sung-eun’s feature directorial debut, “Aloners” (2021) (Sung-eun is also the film’s writer and editor). The film’s central figure is Jina (Gong Seung-yeon), a woman in her late 20s who works at a repetitive, tedious job at a call center where she politely and skillfully handles the complaints of often irritated and sometimes angry credit card customers.
Jina is a solitary woman: no sexual relationships, no friends, her mother has died, and she is angrily estranged from her father who now finds solace in religion—though she dutifully has dutifully watched over him with a camera he knows nothing about. Hong Sung-eun reinforces how isolated she is by often having her walk looking at her iPhone on silent streets and never talking in the office to her co-workers. He also shoots her in hallways and framed by doors looking entrapped.
Jina has built walls between herself and other people, and she sustains herself by living an affectless life. She goes to sleep with a microwave dinner with the television always on as her only companion. There is a male neighbor who makes desultory conversation with her, but she pays no attention to him. Jina treats human interaction as something alien and intrusive, though it doesn’t affect her capacity to do her job. Still, the film would have been stronger if it had given a bit more nuance and emotional variation to her numbness and lack of responsiveness.
When her boss asks her to train a new worker, Jina does so with great reluctance. She also sullenly rebuffs this lonely young girl, Sujin’s (Jung Da-Eun) attempts at making a connection with her. However, Jina’s emotional state begins to slowly shift when Sujin quits the job. It is never made clear if Jina’s aloneness is a matter of choice, or if it is caused by her defensiveness and feelings of insecurity.
The change in Jina’s emotional state is not dramatic, but she has begun to open up a bit. She apologizes to Sujin for rejecting her and wants to give her a proper farewell. She even visits with a new neighbor, to whom she had at first been hostile. The film offers no happy endings, and none of the other characters have strong links to other people. But it doesn’t leave us enveloped in despair. The special strength of this low-key, intelligent, poetic film lies in its images and the performance of Gong Seung-yeon, Who seamlessly conveys quiet isolation and emotional remoteness, as well as a capacity to evoke the subdued crumbling of her protective carapace without the act seeming unnatural.
