Break dance fanatic, Kim Sohee is a Korean high school student. Teenager full of energy although a little withdrawn, she lives with her parents, in a very simple social environment. She is recruited for an end-of-studies internship, via her school, in a call center of Korea Telecom. Open space, extendable hours, blackmail at the bonus-that-never-comes, constant pressure on the objectives to be achieved, cult of performance – never sufficient, always inaccessible, managers transferring their own stress onto their teams: the hell on earth. Although well noted by the hierarchy, the young manager of Kim Sohee commits suicide; the case is quickly hushed up. Kim Sohee, more and more lost, ends up opening her veins. Her distraught parents pick her up from the hospital. For them, the challenge of their daughter’s success takes precedence over the rest: and here we go once more for the internship. But things are going from bad to worse for Kim Sohee. Until the fatal outcome, which we anticipated.
In a second part, it is Yoo-Jin, a female police inspector who, tested by the death of her own mother, takes over from the late Kim Sohee, to investigate the circumstances and reasons for the death of the young girl. daughter. She will face her own hierarchy to fight the denial that the whole social body opposes to the elucidation of this tragedy, the Ministry of Education deflecting itself on the school management, the staff of the call center on their bosses, etc.
Everything regarding this movie is in the way. Almost no music. Long shots that explore reality, like a scanner. Millimetric dialogues, sequences stripped of all artifice, attentive cutting with scrupulous mastery of the tempo, a construction that borders on abstraction. Implacable, About Kim Sohee is admirably carried by the two protagonists who structure this diptych: Kim Si-eun, a beginner actress, whose almost mute role requires a subtle and delicate internalization; but especially Doona Bae, who plays the investigator: she already played a policewoman in A Girl at my Door, Judy Jung’s previous film. He’s a star in South Korea. The breath of the second part of the plot owes a lot to the intensity of this gaze, both scrutinizing and compassionate.
About Kim Sohee. Film by July Jung. South Korea, color, 2022. Duration: 2h15. In theaters April 5, 2023.
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