Movie: The Woman Who Ran Away
Genre: Drama
Director: Hong Shangxiu
Starring: Kim Min-hee
Release Date: February 25, 2020 (Berlin International Film Festival)
Awards: Silver Bear For Best Director in the main competition section of the 70th Berlin International Film Festival
The Korean film "The Woman Who Ran Away" tells the story of Jamie and three other "runaway women" in a minimalist way. This story is like a wide sea, but also a constant surge of waves, never stopping. How to understand the dialogue between women depends on the various hints given to the audience by the director, but also on the audience's personal cognition and experience.
Jamie and her husband have been married for five years and have never been separated, and finally once her husband is on a business trip, Jamie has the opportunity to go out to visit friends. It may be that marriage and age have changed Jamie, she always says that she sticks with her husband every day and becomes less likely to contact others, not to say unnecessary things, to do unnecessary things.
The first person Jamie met was a divorced female friend, who brought Han Niu and shochu, and the two had not seen each other for a long time, and they were slightly strange in intimacy. A friend who used alimony and loans to buy a small house in the suburbs, live with a female roommate, live a pastoral life, and she feels that she must maintain some private space in her marriage.
The second time Jamie met was a female friend who lived alone, and she brought a new coat as a greeting gift. The friend was a Pilates teacher, and had some side hustles, and had saved some money, but was a little forgetful, forgetting the name of the painter who painted Renwangshan and the dishes cooked on the stove. During this period, the male poet who had a one-night stand with her came to the door to entangle, and the female friend was particularly worried that the man would spoil the "good things" between himself and the male architect upstairs.
The third person Jamie meets is a movie theater, the female friend's husband is a writer and Jamie's ex-boyfriend, and the friend has been apologizing for having interfered in their feelings. However, while enjoying her husband's success, my friend did not want her husband to be too famous, and fell into a deep sense of crisis and disgust.
Almost all of the male characters in this film appear on the back, sideways, or even only in the dialogue of the female characters. They are the men behind the women, and none of them are even a pleasing image. For example, a male neighbor comes to the door and asks that he stop feeding stray cats because his wife is afraid. There is also a young poet who constantly goes to the door to show love because he had a one-night stand with Jamie's female friend. Then there is Jamie's ex-boyfriend who split his legs with his girlfriend, who became a well-known writer, and in the ex-boyfriend's past has passed, and Jamie's pretense has completely betrayed himself.
The three stories are transitioned with the same music, this music does not fit the atmosphere of Korean life at all, full of sense of age and exoticism, like the electronic music style of more than twenty years ago, I don't know where I heard it, inexplicably sighing, moving, sentimental. The film does not set up sharp core conflicts, and the three chat dialogues all have some sense of ceremony, such as always having a faint scenery outside the window and often eating. After the scene changes, the topic also changes, which are all daily loose topics, such as whether to be a vegetarian when eating barbecue, and when fruit is eaten, talk about chickens, stray cats and neighbors around.
The film's personal style is very strong, and the important parts of the entire plot are hidden in the dialogue. The two women are chatting face to face, the picture is basically symmetrical, and only their side faces can be seen. During the dialogue, the camera suddenly changes from the medium scene to the close-up, originally immersed in the dialogue, suddenly seeing the expression state on the face of the character, there is a sense of documentary, as if not moving the lens will miss the important information that cannot be reproduced, dynamically capturing the emotional changes of the moment.
But this expression is precisely carefully designed, and the sense of scene is very strong. The sense of relaxation and decadence in the characters' dialogues, and the slightly reddened face after drinking, are not deliberately expressed for this scene, as if it is a documentary video clip.
Jamie and the other three women are both "runaway women" and hesitate in their relationships, enjoying the benefits of pushing and pulling between men and women. They have escaped from their original lives, trapped themselves in a small house, and want to come out but do not want to come out. The women chatted softly and softly about daily trivia, comforting each other, as if it were a secret in the quiet atmosphere of Northern Europe, and the whole painting style was also very similar to the Nordic feeling, chatting lazily in small talk, occasionally losing focus of their eyes, and did not deliberately express emotions and plots. However, everywhere is full of women's jealousy and secret competition, and personal life and work are quietly competing.
Although Jamie plays an ordinary married woman, she has a natural desire in her, feminine charm, sexiness, and wildness. In many competitions, she wanted to rely on her sense of superiority in her emotional life to gain the upper hand, and even a little bit of nonsense, and as a result, she read the ideas she did not want to admit, she did not seem to love her husband so much, and her work was not outstanding.
Jamie once sighed, "Everyone will have a home." At the end of the film, she is convinced that her final destination does not seem to be as bright as imagined, that the past has become part of her memories, and that she is still adrift on the sea, floating like a wave. So Jamie turned around and went back to the movie theater and watched the movie again, like repeating life day after day.