A Brand New Life (2009)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

One of the greatest fears of childhood is being abandoned by your parents and left to face the world alone. In A Brand New Life, winner of Best Asian Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, French director Ounie Lecomte recalls her childhood in South Korea with this sensitively rendered and touching story of a young girl who was left by her father in an all-girls Catholic orphanage to be placed for adoption. Set in Seoul in 1975, nine-year-old Jin-hee, superbly performed by Kim Sae-rom, does not suspect anything out of the ordinary after spending a day with her father (Sol Kyung-gu) buying new clothes, going out to dinner, and taking a ride together on his bicycle.When Jin-hee is suddenly dropped off the next day at an orphanage just after her father bought her a cake that she picked out, she is bewildered but believes that her father will return to bring her home. Left to adjust to a strange new environment, however, she is full of anger. Though she is treated well by the nuns and the other children, she refuses to comply with the rules and resists the requests of sister Bomo (Park Myeong-shin), the woman who runs the orphanage. Refusing to speak, eat or change clothes, Jin-hee pleads with the director Koo (Oh Man-seok) to allow her to call her father but he is unable to find him. Planning to escape, she spends the night outside in the cold.When she decides to return, she begins to reluctantly accept that her father will not return and that she will sooner or later be placed for adoption, perhaps with a family from another country. Fortunately, she finds a friend in 11-year-old Sook-hee (Park Do-yeon), a bright and outgoing girl who has learned to say the right things to prospective parents, but often causes trouble with the nuns. The two girls practice English together, play card games, sneak extra pieces of cake for each other, and care for a sick bird. Sook-hee tells her that she has started to have her period but she must keep it a secret. They talk about another girl Yeshin (Ko Ah-sung) who is depressed by a letter she receives from a boy (Mun Hack-jin) that she has a crush on.Even though she is able to bond with Sook-hee, Jin-hee remains distressed about the lies her father told her, taking out her frustration by destroying Christmas dolls given to children as gifts, and refusing to answer questions at a meeting with perspective parents. A Brand New Life involves the heart but refuses to pull out all the dramatic stops to ratchet up the tears. Though its theme is downbeat, it is not a depressing film because the children are shown as having amazing strength and resilience. When each girl leaves with a new family and the remaining children sing "Auld Lang Syne," they are not just saying goodbye and lamenting the old times, but designing a brand new life for their friend and voicing hope as well for their own future.

What kind of story would attract the acclaimed South Korean director Lee Chang-Dong's support and serving as a producer? (So far he has only served as a producer of two films. He was even only an executive producer of his own work "Secret Sunshine." I have to also mention that the film's French producer Laurent Lavolé was the guest who I honorably hosted in the Taipei Film Festival in 2008.) "A Brand New Life" is such a simple but moving film from the new French Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte. Based on her personal experience as a child, she sincerely shares this poignant but very inspiring childhood memories to the audience around the world.Jinhee was taken out on a trip by her father. Her father bought a wide range of gifts, they ate lots of delicious food, and he even gave her a big cake, but it all turned to a different direction once they set their feet into a children's monastery shelter. It turned out that Jinhee's life will never be the same ever since. This has a similar premise as the famous fairy tale "The Little Princess" by the British writer Frances Hodgson Burnett. Though we think that there would be another harsh supervisor and several kids who try to bully her here through Jinhee's eyes, fortunately, the reality is not entirely so tragic.The supervisor seems harsh, but in fact, she has a loving heart under her icy face; the crippled sister, who's the oldest among the children, sadly took her fate after the unsuccessful struggle; Sookhee is already an older child than most, she seems capricious at first, but she's very sympathetic underneath. She and Jinhee soon to become inseparable friends. But they still have total different perspectives toward the future. Sookhee, who has watched many of the adopted children left, wish that she would find a good home before she becomes too old, so she tried her best to promote herself once she gets the chance. But Jinhee, who's still waiting for her father to fulfill his promise and come back to pick her up, but the wait seems to be increasingly long and increasingly remote.Lecomte showed her great talent in this film she wrote and directed for the first time. She presented the very personal story in a very modest and earthy way, but it's even more effective and moving than letting the sentiments taking over. Take the part where Jinhee and Sookhee secretly took care of a dying bird after they found it as an example, it simply conveys the profound meaning of the fine line between life and death. Kin Sae Ron, who was casted as Jinhee, successfully performed as the crucial key to make the film work, whether it's the look when being helpless, or the fake smile when she has learned to be sophisticated, they are all hard to make the audience not be moved.After Sookhee was gone, Jinhee, who had hope once again in her heart, had lost someone she could rely on. In the meantime, she learned that her father and the family had moved to somewhere no one knows from the headmaster of the monastery. It was the first time in her life that she felt all alone and was left in helplessness and despair. but she eventually learned to face the difficulties of life with strengths. She quickly got a new hope that might become a turning point in her life with her adorable looks. When on her way towards the unknown destination, the warmth when leaning on her father's back on the back seat of the bike suddenly appeared in her heart, but it may only be deeply buried in the memory as the song she sang from her heart.

...yet I was left wanting for more. I didn't get to know much about Jinhee, why she was there, what happened to her family, and the like. Yet in real life, as this movie was based on, we often don't get the answers we seek or that would make sense of our situation. One reviewer said it wasn't a tearjerker but a heart tugger, and I tend to agree. The roles were beautifully played the child cast and a few cameos were nice by two of Korea's leading male actors who played Jinhee's father and a sympathetic doctor.The sad thing is, Koreans still dump unwanted children into orphanages to this day, a lot of whom are the product of out-of-wedlock relationships. It's horrible to have the children suffer for the mistakes of adults.

Life can appear very strange, when no-one is there to explain it. Especially when you're a child and you have plenty of questions. This is a big question which started the day when a father, with no explanations left his daughter at an orphanage. A Brand New Life takes its spectator to childhood - to a time when we asked many things and perhaps got no answers and no explanations why things happen exactly this way. Film is through and through seen from the eyes of a child, but brought to it's richness with the help of a wonderful script and skillful camera, allowing its spectator to put aside for a while his adult point of view and just observe, and try to understand. This is the story of a little girl, Jinhee, played marvelously by Mademoiselle Sae Ron Kim. She poses questions, but there never comes an honest answer why her life has turned out like this.A Brand New Life achieves a perfect harmony, one element underlines the other one. The long takes allow the spectator to grasp, how long the time in orphanage seemed for Jinhee, the relatively small amounts of dialogs depicts the introvert child, whose emotions break out through some furious actions. The gray tone palette which en-tours the setting of the orphanage shows very understandable the sadness of this place.Film touches not only an auto-biographical story, but the sad truth of life – we all know that there are thousands of places like this around the world. And there are thousands of children who, perhaps, have mastered this tragicomic show for the visitors, the potential new families.In conclusion I'd like to say that this is a very daring film, knowing that this was a true story and a true childhood, perhaps lived through second by second as we see it on the screen. I must say that it's a brave choice to put a story like this on the screen. But its greatest value is the absence of a pathos and absence of a depiction the children as a victims of the cruelty of life. A Brand New Life is hope and search for the answers through and through it.