i could easily give this film an 8 or 8.5 stars higher rating, but two things simply made it impossible. but first of all, i have to say this is quite emotional movie about the atrocity a teenage girl could ever face or deal with. a very sad story lack of any humanity in it. human beings are indeed the worst species this planet earth could do without, men and women, how heartless they could be, how senseless they could do, to a teenage girl. the loneliness that this main character suffered and had to deal with were simply beyond any word may be able to describe.
i have to praise the young actor who played Han Gong Ju, a sometimes plain, sometimes ugly, but most of the time looked beautiful young woman, depending how the camera's angles. i rarely saw a young actor could give such subtle performance by using her body language and expressions to show the gradual transformation of her mood under different conditions without any pretentiousness and exaggeration. a very talented natural young actor indeed.
the subject of the screenplay was also well scripted with deep feelings of helplessness and cruelty. if the casting job could do better and the editing could be more clearer, then this film could be on par with "oldboy", but it didn't.
first, about the casting: why hired two almost similar look alike female actors to play the young girl's mother and the teacher's mother? we know that almost 99% of the Korean women are having their faces(or even their body parts) fixed up by plastic surgery. so these two mature women sometimes were very difficult to identify who's who. they all looked alike, thus caused a lot of confusion in this film.
secondly, about the editing: the past and the present, the flashbacks, the connection, the transferring from the past to the present...were so carelessly arranged and edited. thus also caused so many confusions during watch. some of the flashbacks were so abrupt and so clueless until viewers realized they were the past instead of the present tense.
other than these two shortcomings, i have no other complaints against this little gem.
