Synopsis
If you feel the sensibility of ...ing has something unique about it, maybe it’s because the film takes “the girl-hood” seriously. Minah is a high school student living with her mother. Minah’s father passed away long ago. She keeps a secret and has to wear a mitten on her left hand for some mysterious reasons. At first, she looks like a stock girlish cartoon character fond of things like the ballet. However, she proves to be more than that. She can be daring and brave. She has a pure heart shying away in front of her first love. Although ...ing sets her up as an ill-fated, tragic figure, it gives off rare warmth of a very special kind. A small but important achievement of the film is that it succeeds in avoiding the gaze of “Lolita Complex”. Korean cinema has a long, long history of totally ignoring “a girl’s true heart.” In countless films made by male directors, girls would appear as a ghost with vengeance (Whispering Corridors) or run around killing people, taking up some symbolic alternatives of phallus such as machine guns(Resurrection of the Little Match Girl). Or they are stuck in garish nightmares (A Tale of Two Sisters). Or they are simply presented as hot sexual objects complete with their virginity(Samaria). Especially those girls copying the images of the girls’ cartoons of Japan - a sailor’s uniform, long straight black hair, fair complexion, and big, round, innocent eyes - they were used as the first object of sheer fetishism. ...ing takes a different path. It starts with scarring a girl’s body(finger). We watch the cut quietly and the girl shakes hands with the pain inflicting on her life, smiling. The paintings Minah leaves behind and the pictures of her “scar” stay in the hearts of the people who are left behind. ...ing ends to a beautiful score but leaves us a lasting food for thought: yes, we might have seen too many macho films for too long a time. Besides, it’s worth watching just for the spectacular performances from Lee Mi-sook and Lim Soo-Jung playing mother and daughter. (KIM Hyung-suk)