This is a slow-moving, evocative and thoughtful piece of cinema from South Korea. The origin of this film is a 2002 Manga comic of the same name written by Daisuka Igarashi; this then was made into a two-part live-action film in 2014, before Yim Soon-Rye, South Korea's leading female film director decided to rework it and make it more 'homely' and pensive, and the film was released only in February this year, and has already exceeded all box office expectations.
It's the story of a young lady, Hye Won (Kim Tae-ri), brought up in a rural countryside village with her widowed mother [the house is the father's but we never hear of him or know anything about him or his whereabouts] moves to the capital of Seoul to go to university and find work. It is at this juncture that her mother suddenly and without warning leaves the family house and disappears out of her life. City life is not for her and the boyfriend she has at university is not enough for her to stay. She is hungry. Hungry in every sense of the word. Hungry for real, fresh food, countryside food of her childhood, not the plastic fast food of the city. Hungry for fulfilment in her life. Hungry for happiness - something again she associates with childhood and the countryside. But above all hungry for answers.
She moves back to her family home and settles down to a period of self searching and soul searching. She tells herself that this will be only for a few days, but we all know that that simply will not be the case. Whilst there she meets up with two of her childhood friends, the ying and yang of her own personality. Eun-Sook (Jin Ki-joo) went to university in the city and returned to become a commercial gardener. His is at peace and one with the countryside and loves his gentle but sometimes harsh lifestyle. On the other hand is Jae-ha (Ryu Jun-yeol) as the girl who never got away from the town but always yearns and fantasises about the big city and is like a square peg in a round hole where she is.
Hye Won acclimatises herself easily to the ways of the country life again. Her love of food and cooking (a hugely important visual metaphor throughout) and the way she so easily slips back into the regular routine of seasonal labour, (The film goes from Winter, through Spring, Summer, Autumn and back to Winter again.) tells us that she has found at least some of what she was looking for. There are hints of what her life was like in Seoul, flashbacks to important memories of her with her mother, and a kind of love rivalry between her and Jae-ha over Eun-Sook. But mostly it is about her and her relationship with nature and food. We see her preparing and cooking various dishes throughout the film, and we even are 'treated' to the noises that accompany the eating of food too; slurping, wiping the face, masticating, and stomach rumblings are all audially enlarged.
'You have to wait to taste the best food' or 'Cooking reflects your heart' and other sentences from the film. It is also culturally quite interesting too. We see traditional foods and traditional recipes, as well as what a country house in Korea is like and how it is furnished.
What makes the film for me though is the ending. She eventually finds and has the courage to read the letter from her mother explaining why she left. It took her a whole year of evading the problem by working hard and cooking, but now she is ready to face up to herself. She leaves the village and returns to the city. This only confirms for her everything that she had thought already and is immediately miserable again. Upon returning soon afterwards back to her country house she sees the door open and someone within. The film ends here without revealing who that person is, and we are left on a wonderful cliffhanger. Her mother? Eun-Sook? Jae-ha? I would like to think it was her mother, but that's just my interpretation!
For anyone interested in food, the outdoors, and seeing something a little different, then this film is a must. It's very gentle and deliberately inconclusive in more ways than just the ending, but the subtle and real acting of protagonist Kim Tae-ri is also well worth the effort. In Korean with English subtitles.
Reviewer - Chris Benchley
on - 25/11/18
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