Writer and Director: Jeong Ji-hye
There has been an interesting and welcome focus on consent and female bodies at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, particularly the filming and distribution of intimate material. Mahesh Narayanan’s Declaration focused on a woman whose agency was taken from her when a video was shared online and now Korean film Jeong-sun, also utilising a factory setting, does the same when personal privacy and trust is violated leading to shame and victim-blaming directed at the female lead.
Jeong-sun is a shy and conforming worker who performs her manual packing job well and lives with her adult daughter. When a new recruit joins the team, she starts a relationship with him but keeps it a secret from friends and family because she hates being talked about. But Yeong-su is keen to be seen as one of the lads, sharing a private video of Jeong-sun that puts her firmly in the spotlight.
Jeong Ji-hye’s debut film has an unusual focus, on middle-aged relationships between two lonely and unmarried people finding a brief connection in otherwise routine lives. Frequently noting their age and the notion that they are too old for love, the reaction of younger characters both to their relationship and the video is particularly revealing, somehow adding additional layers of disgust because Jeong-sun is older than the usual victims of revenge porn and digital crime.
Jeong-sun takes its time in the build up in order to create the context of co-workers as well as the gentle development of the relationship itself, so it is a while before the infamous video is recorded and released and the dramatic tension increases. Throughout, the writer-director tries to balance an observational and issue-driven approach that doesn’t always work successfully but the film does make space for the long aftermath of its wide viewing and the heroine’s range of reactions over time.
In trying to give Jeong-sun back her agency in the final section of the film, however, it is disappointing that instead the story plays into the ‘crazy woman’ cliches. The camera is placed from the co-worker’s perspective, allowing the unpleasant young floor supervisor to have the last word, which itself is a derogatory name launched at Jeong-sun. The audience by now wants the lead to find her voice and to push back against her colleagues but this confrontation feels as thought it reinfroces the stereotypes, albeit unintentionally.
As the title character, Kim Kum-soon is excellent as an ordinary woman unable to believe what is happening to her, reserved and unassuming, not at all deserving of her public shaming but showing several different sides to her personality including a distinct blossoming when she is with Yeong-su. Cho Hyun-woo is quite a puppyish lover and conveys the loneliness of moving to a new area well, so while it is understandable that he would betray her, even in Kim’s performance he knows it is inexcusable.
Jeong-su is a film about an important subject and the trust that exists within a couple that is so easily broken and how simply intimate material can be shared. A little too ponderous in places, Jeon’s story is nonetheless an important and rarely explored one that has some important points to make about the very different victims of digital crime.
Jeong-sun is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2022.
