그를 마주하는 시간 「Geuleul majuhaneun sigan」
Release Date: N/A
Duration: 61 mins
Director: Hwang In-won
Writer: Hwang In-won (Screenplay),
Starring: Seok-hee, Lee Seung-yeon, Kim See-eun, Kim Sol-hae, Bahk Woo-young,
Having watched Hang In-won’s previous film, the gently funny short Flavor of Sisterhood (2023), I was not prepared for Journey to Face Them, her feature debut. It is a quiet and considered work featuring of a writer forced to face the trauma stemming from a sexual assault that draws upon an observational style, naturalistic acting and circumstantial details to elliptically show this process.
Spoilers ahead
We follow 30-something Su-yeon (Seok-hee). In the ten years since she graduated from the literature department at the prestigious Hankuk University, she has spent time writing romance web novels. Her material comes from casual encounters with men she meets on dating apps but she will have to temper the content of her stories if she hopes to finally have her work in print.
As Su-yeon navigates enhancing her novel’s romantic elements with the help of a young editor named Kang Min-jeong (Lee Seung-yeon), she is visited by Jeong-an (Kim See-eun), a senior from her university days. Their interaction is easy and Su-yeon expresses admiration that Jeong-ahn’s short story won a literary award but she is stopped short by a question, “You remember Professor Shin, right?”
A group of women, students and others in the literary world, are planning on suing him for the sexual violence he inflicted on them. Su-yeon is asked to add her name to the collection. Her response is a sort of dodge that disappoints Jeong-ahn. From this moment, the film follows Su-yeon over a few days as she reveals why she replied this way.
The trauma’s after-effects are also hinted at cleverly and slowly, firstly through Min-jeong’s editing as she identifies a lack of love and an absence of charm in the main character. There is something in Seok-hee’s subtle performance that indicates Su-yeon isn’t all there. For a romance writer, there’s not much warmth. She is detached. As others talk, her eyes drift off. She taps away on her keyboard and methodically puffs on an e-cigarette. Her interactions with men are brusque, a formality used merely to get through for research’s sake.
These are fragmentary clues leading to the full horror of her present-tense struggle which only becomes apparent when Professor Shin’s presence is introduced via a call, the shock of which to Su-yeon, Seok-hee delivers with a horrendous physical jolt that is scary. It is here that Hwang In-won drops a chilling flashback featuring a younger Su-yeon and the screen adopts the vertical aspect ratio of a phone voyeuristically watching her. His intrusion, horrific in many ways and represented by a slimy voice, and the flashback recontextualise our understanding of Su-yeon and her response makes sense.
All of this comes as the film maintains Professor Shin’s presence through unfolding news coverage to remind viewers that Su-yeon isn’t the only victim and her decision to dodge, even if it comes at a moral cost, is driven by a fear of exposure. Through this, the film encompasses wider gender relations in a heavily patriarchal society, that being a victim doesn’t just end with the incident but becomes an all-encompassing identity, the stigma of which inhibits how a person lives and tragedy emerges as this becomes apparent just as Su-yeon and her younger editor tease out emotions of pure love in her fiction and in her life. Alas, at this time, it seems impossible to reconcile the love and pain and the drama from this fissure ramps up as the film hones in on its title Journey to Face Them which refers not only to Su-yeon facing up to Professor Shin’s crime but also her younger self whom she has hidden away from sight to try and forget her trauma.
There are no easy answers at the end of Su-yeon’s journey. Perhaps no answer at all but the willingness to broach the subject is enough. If Korean cinema came to international prominence with works like I Saw the Devil (2010) and Bedevilled (2010), hyper-violent revenge thrillers built off the back of broken female bodies by male directors, more recent titles from female filmmakers have presented more considered and realistic tales that address real-world horrors, like Way Back Home (2019). Hwang In-won’s Journey to Face Them fits neatly in this mould but refrains from offering easy answers.