Following the highly acclaimed A Girl At My Door (2014), July Jung’s second film is an equally captivating drama. This time Jung focuses on the exploitation of an intern at a high profile and very competitive call centre and the aftermath that follows.
Inspired by a true event, newcomer Kim Si-eun plays Sohee, a bubbly high school student who enjoys drinking with friends and attending K-pop dance classes. Once starting work experience in what first appears to be a friendly office, she begins to realise that the it is a toxic environment controlled by various layers of bullies. Sohee feels trapped and is unable turn to anyone for support. We then follow Sohee, through a tragic chain of events, as her cries for help are ignored and finds the only way out is by taking her own life. The second part of the film then follows detective Yoo-jin (played by the always superb Doona Bae). While carrying out the investigation, she discovers a never-ending, viscous cycle of abuse and those higher up the corporate ladder, who are covering it up. Yoo-jin delves deeper to find out who is responsible and to prevent another employee from becoming the next Sohee.
As with A Girl at My Door, which featured manual labour workplace mistreating their immigrant employees, this is just as much a compelling film and tackles similar issues. It shows an environment full of pressure that is not much different from what we read about in the news. I found this to be very gripping, as Sohee starts off as a naive and trusting character and then slowly falls into despair. I feel that Jung’s film is showing us tragedies like this are more common than we realise and closer to home than we think. We get to see the events from both the victim and the detective’s point of view. The performances are all very convincing and it is easy to sympathise with Sohee during the events that lead to her fate. It then becomes easy to feel hatred towards the corporate bosses as well as the chief of police, who all happen to be very heartless as they try to protect themselves and stop justice from being served.
As well as being very thought provoking, there is a balance of happier scenes before the tragedies take place, helping to keep he viewer to stay emotionally invested. Sohee starts off as a happy-go-lucky, character looking forward to starting the new working chapter in her life. I find this to be a highly-relevant and relatable film for a refection on today’s society and one that is showing the progression of Jung’s directing work. If it were up to me, I’d want to see this film short-listed for a Best Foreign Film Oscar.
