project film school

a trip to the nyff 2007 : Secret Sunshine

(directed by Lee Chang-Dong)

Going into Lee Chang-Dong's Cannes winner Secret Sunshine, I didn't know much about what I was about to see. All I knew was that it was a film of shifting emotion and that Jeon Do-Yeon was supposed to give an amazing performance.

After all was said and done, I was glad to have known so little, as Secret Sunshine is a film about transition and how events change us and allow us to accept that change and a huge part of enjoying that process is not knowing what will happen next.

I don't want to give anything away so I'll go without a plot summary, suffice to say Jeon Do-Yeon's accolades are well deserved for her portrayal of a woman that has a lot handed to her throughout the film's 2 hours and 22 minutes. Lee Chang-Dong takes a character and displays how people shed layers of superficiality when confronted with tragedy and uncertainty.
He also provides a balance that allows the viewer to not get lost in the despair through the character of Kim, played by Kang-Ho Song, who is best known for more macho roles (ie his work in The Host). In Secret Sunshine he plays with something different and gives us a character that is quite understated and docile in nature, a man that at 39 isn't married, still hangs out with the guys from work and develops an innocent crush on Jeon Do-Yeon's Shin-ae.

The one thing that makes me sad about the film, is that as of now, Secret Sunshine has no American distribution. This is a real shame, as the film deals with emotions in a way most Americans, let alone American films, never do. However, it is nice to remember the power that The New York Film Festival has to bring us works that we wouldn't have access to outside of the festival. Although in today's troubled film climate, for every Secret Sunshine the fest has, we have to contend with a The Darjeeling Limited, a film I can make no judgments on (I haven't seen it) except to note that it premiered at the NYFF on Friday and promptly opened in New York theaters the next day.