OUR SUNHI

DATABASE
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DATABASE

OUR SUNHI

Oct 05, 2020

Writer by Pierce Conran
View1931

2013 | 88 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR HONG Sang-soo

CAST JUNG Yu-mi, LEE Sun-kyun, KIM Sang-joong, JUNG Jae-young

RELEASE DATE September 12, 2013

CONTACT Finecut

Tel +82 2 569 8777

Fax +82 2 569 6662

Email cineinfo@finecut.co.kr

Several weeks ago in this column, we looked at HONG Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie (2010), the story of a young film student played by JUNG Yu-mi that draws the attention of both professors and fellow students at her school. Three years later, HONG and JUNG teamed up once more for a similar tale that also bears the name of JUNG’s protagonist - Our Sunhi (2013).

Sunhi (JUNG Yu-mi) is a film student who suddenly disappeared from her campus, leaving behind a lover and several other men who pined after her. She returns one fall day and meets Professor Choi (KIM Sang-joong) to ask him to write a letter of recommendation for her as she intends to pursue graduate studies in America. He agrees and asks her to come back the next day. That afternoon, she drinks in a nearby chicken restaurant alone, and notices Mun-su (LEE Sun-kyun), her ex-boyfriend, and calls through the window for him to join her. Mun-su’s feelings for her are quickly rekindled and he later drops in on his senior, director Jae-hak (JUNG Jae-young), who graduated from the same school. Before long, the feelings all three men had towards Sunhi are revived, but most of them dance around the fact to one another, whether knowingly or not.

Another similarity between Oki’s Movie (2010) and Our Sunhi (2013) is that they were both made in years when Director HONG released two films, a feat that would become increasingly common after these first two instances. However, whereas Hahaha (2010) and Oki’s Movie (2010) feel like very different films (or least as different as two HONG films can be), Our Sunhi (2013) and its 2013 predecessor Nobody’s Daughter Haewon feel much more aligned. They are both about young women aspiring for film careers who draw amorous attention from the men around them.

Prior to 2013, HONG had made many films centered on women and the men who chase after them, such as Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000) and Woman On The Beach (2006), but 2013 feels like a year where his interest as a filmmaker changed, and he began to hone in more specifically on the female viewpoint, rather than the gaze of the men chasing after them. Gone are the dry, awkward sex scenes that had been peppered throughout his films and the women have become more assertive, even if their male counterparts still refuse to acknowledge them as such.

When Sunhi reads the first recommendation letter that Professor Choi gives her, which he insists she isn’t obliged to use, she is flustered by the faint praise scattered between comments referring to her as meek and mild-mannered. As a viewer, these words are particularly perplexing, seeing as we hear them shortly after seeing Sunhi eviscerate a fellow classmate for lying to her about the professor’s whereabouts.

Our Sunhi (2013) also continues to demonstrate HONG’s mastery of dry comedy, which is particularly pronounced here with the casting of JUNG Jae-young, who would later win international accolades for his second HONG film Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), and the reading of the second recommendation letter, which drips with gushing praise after Professor Choi’s cockles are warmed following a bit of light flirtation.

HONG earned the Best Director prize at the Locarno International Film Festival for Our Sunhi (2013), which for now has been his fourth and final collaboration with JUNG Yu-mi, who also featured in supporting roles in Like You Know It All (2009) and In Another Country (2012).

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