Things I Watched: Nobody's Daughter Haewon — Not Much Happens

When a director makes enough movies, you tend to notice a number of recurring traits. Terrance Malick for instance likes to include a lot of shots of nature. Yasujiro Ozu enjoys framing shots with characters standing in doorways. Quentin Tarantino enjoys characters swearing at one another, a lot.

If South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang Soo has a shtick it’s paradoxically that nothing happens. His prolific rate of films – 18 in the past ten years! – is guided by his tendency to draw towards the unremarkable qualities of life. He often makes movies that are extremely ordinary but by being extremely ordinary succeed in getting to the heart of characters and their interpersonal dilemmas.

His 2013 film Nobody’s Daughter Haewon follows this line of thinking. It’s about a young, beautiful – even for Korean standards – student at a crucial point in her personal development. She’s struggling because she's dating a film professor, a man much older than she - a relationship complicated by his immature tendencies and family, including a new born baby. 

I’ve seen the film once before a few years ago and while I can’t say I absolutely adore it, I do like how the simple framing offers a quaint glimpse at Korean culture. It’s hard not to be taken aback by Haewon’s zestful enthusiasm for life despite her problems. She's not a particularly complex character but evokes the ever-present youthful tendency of wanting to break free without really knowing how.

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