A Girl at My Door
A Girl at My Door could so easily have been fluffed in less careful hands.
Fortunately, writer-director July Jung has a delicate touch, melding a weighty, challenging story with wonderful performances. The resulting picture, thrumming with love, desire and violence, is excellent.
Young-nam (Bae Doona), the newly instated police chief in a small South Korean coastal town, has been transferred from Seoul on an obscure count of misconduct. She quickly finds herself allied with young Do-hee (Kim Sae-ron) against the girl’s drunk and violent stepfather, Yong-ha (Song Sae-byeok). But Young-nam is a drinker too, downing rice wine she’s decanted into water bottles. And Do-hee shows increasing guile as she vies to escape her oppressive domestic circumstances. So though Yong-ha is certainly the villain, his stepdaughter and her protector show dark little flickers as they try to end his reign.
There’s a definite seam of melodrama running right through A Girl at My Door. But Jung works with such clarity, and Bae and Kim are so strong, that the end product feels so very sharp.
Released by Peccadillo Pictures