YIM Soon-rye shows small but certain happiness (So-hwak-hang), a word from HARUKI Murakami’s essay that refers to a small affordable happiness in daily life, through her new drama movie Little Forest.
After Whistle Blower (2014) which twisted chauvinism appeared in Korean society and media about the real-life issue about HWANG Woo-suk scandal, the name YIM Soon-rye is more seen in TV news and papers as an animal right activist. Indeed apart from her title as a movie director, she is also representative of KARA (Korean Animal Rights Advocates) and it seems like her interest and major field moved to animal rights. Four years later her new movie Little Forest, an adaptation from Japanese manga, the two-part film already released in Japan, certainly mirrors her lifestyle and admiration of slow living and it depicts the ideal society that the director yearns
“When I was in Seoul, I always feel hungry”
Hae-won (KIM Tae-ri) fails again to pass license exam for a teacher and has a problem with her boyfriend at the same time. She has been living in Seoul since freshman of the university, but she couldn’t feel settle down and feels the emptiness in that big metropolitan. Instead of struggling in that city, she returns to her small but beautiful hometown Uisung, a village in Northern Gyeongsang Province.
Back home, she still lives alone as her mother left her when she was 18 (or with her dog O-gu), but she rarely feels hunger as she did in Seoul. She cooks local dishes with local ingredients such as pasta with wildflowers, cold been noodle, and makgori (Korean traditional rice alcohol). She reconnects with her childhood friends Jae-ha (RYU Jun-yeol) and Eun-sook (JIN Ki-joo) at the same time when she returns and accommodates herself to slow rural town life.
There is no tricky plot that leads the movie. On the other hand, this movie chooses to go slow tone and fully shows the nature that is rarely seen in current intense Korean movies. This movie goes slow. No need to hurry up yourself to follow the complex movie plots, instead you can lay back in coach whilst enjoying the beauty of four seasons in Korea. Instead, the director tells the audience what she wants to say through the dialogues of the main characters.
With mouth-watering cooking scenes, KIM Tae-ri adds more flavor to this film that might have been tedious rural life diary. After playing a strong solid girl in colonial era from The Handmaiden (2016), she becomes an ordinary graduate which has a common problem as the audience in the cinema have. Her time with her friends and her life as simple but satisfied is maybe a longing of city people such as caring each other instead of competing with each other, take your own time instead of fit in the timeline of fast-paced life. The solid attitude of Hye-won, even her current status seems deemed, hints the audience that there is no certain answer to life.
Although only appearing in flashback, Hye-won’s mother (MOON So-ri) takes the key role to deliver what director YIM wants to provoke through this movie. ‘You need to learn how to wait, then you can enjoy the best of it’ ‘I truly believe it will be better (to do something) than just wait and do nothing’. These lines from the movie have been being repeated in director YIM’s movie, like Waikiki brothers (2001), Forever the Moment (2008), Rolling home with a bull (2010). Without her presence in the movie this movie could have been a typical coming-of-age movie which admires the beauty of youth, but having a character like her make this movie appeals to all people who feel as a hamster in the wheel of never ended competition.
