July Jung's 2014 film "A Girl At My Door" is many things at once; it is simultaneously a partial police-procedural, an exploration of two very different types of alcoholism, a story of a mother-daughter type relationship, and the tale of a young girl escaping her abusive father (with time to address issues like illegal immigration and LGBT rights in the workplace). It also has a philosophical bent, and is one of those rare films that is content to leave the viewer with more questions than answers (and not because it wasn't intelligent enough to know the answers, but instead because it was intelligent enough to understand that audiences can actually think for themselves).
For a film, looking back, does so much, it is remarkable how mannered it is and how unfussily it moves forward in the act of watching it. The core of the plot is essentially a three-hander; Young-Nam (Doona Bae) is a recently disgraced police officer who has been relocated to a small seaside town after an unspecified incident. After establishing herself as a steely, determined and stoic piece of work (one awkwardly effective scene sees her refusing to participate in office karaoke), she finds herself drawn to a young girl named Do-Hee (Sae-Ron Kim), who is being brutally abused by her father Yong-Ha (Sae-byeok Song).
Do-Hee keeps turning up at Young-Nam's door in ever-increasing states of distress and dishevelment until Young-Nam is forced to take her in, not entirely to her chagrin but not to her great pleasure either. But eventually a warmth comes to pass between them, and a maternal relationship of sorts is formed.
There are various late-in-the-day revelations, and the plot builds to a conclusion that isn't so much tense as just messy, one where sympathies slide and motivations can only be guessed at; and this is a good thing. Jung's writing and direction is so surehanded that any attempt to have actually explained anything would have been cheap and forced. This is a film with a commitment to reality such that it understand that some motivations are hidden even from those performing the action.
It's also, technically, a very accomplished piece of work with a visual style to match the fairly bleak subject matter. The score from Yeong-gyu Jang is sparse, with strings and piano chords flaring up quietly and very occasionally, only really coming dominating the soundscape for the finale. And the cinematography from Hyun Seok Kim is wonderfully understated, grim, grey and bar maybe two shots, expressly unvibrant, capturing the sense of place in this town, framing the washing lines, the docks, the stone pier, Do-Hee's red house. It might not be a nice place, but it's a place we come to know.
It does all hinge on the acting, however, and thankfully all three performances work very well; I was particularly impressed by Doona Bae, who gives a composed, dignified performance even as her life, seemingly, falls apart, and she keeps pouring the alcohol. Contrasted with Song's performance as Yong-Ha, also an apparent alcoholic, I was reminded of the maxim from 2005's Capote that two characters grew up in the same house, but one left through the front door and the other through the back.
What's ultimately so effective is that the film consistently trumps audience expectations without every coming across as exploitative or smarmy; every twist seems rooted in what these characters might actually do, and that's the kind of intelligence which is uncommon in movies like this. It might not be a happy film, but it is rewarding, thoughtful, morally cogent, and doesn't disappear after you've left the theatre. It dares to ask, "who do YOU feel sorry for?"
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