A Girl at My Door

Nominated for Un Certain Regard, A Girl At My Door is presented with a delicate touch by writer-director July Jung and surprises with some unexpected turns.

Lee Young-nam (Bae, Cloud Atlas) moves from Seoul to an unnamed fishing village to assume duties of the police chief. An alcoholic, she hides her drinking problem by swigging vodka alone from tipped out water bottles. When she observes the young Do-hee (Kim) beaten by her drunken stepfather Park Yong-Ha (Song) and her senile grandmother Juh-Soon (Kim Jin-gu), and picked on by kids at her school, she’s advised to stay out of it – this is the kind of town where one keeps to one self and doesn’t get involved, especially when that family is a big player in the local fishing trader, the biggest employer in the village. So when Do-hee turns up at her front door looking for help, Lee ignores the warnings and invites her in.

But something is not right and writer-director July Jung delights in keeping the audience on unsure footing. Either the kid is psychologically damaged by either the constant beatings and that the entire village has stood by and watched but something’s off. She beats herself in the face when Lee refuses to, even when she has been ‘bad’. “The girl’s got issues,” her stepfather warns. But there’s something else afoot, with Jung hinting that the girl may be responsible for the motorbike accident involving her grandmother, and there’s Single White Female creepiness when Doo-hee turns up in the same pudding bowl haircut as her new protector.

There’s a question mark over Lee too: Alcoholism aside, there’s something off about the new chief – there’s a hint that Lee was transferred to the coastal town because of some earlier misconduct and she doesn’t put up too much of a fight when the young girl gets undressed, slips into her bath and asks for a sip of her vodka. Buying her a school uniform is a show of motherly love, but a bikini is something else. Atticus Finch she is not.

Jung quietly cranks up these elements as A Girl At My Door rumbles towards its shocking ending. The warm performances from both Bae Doo-na and Kim Sae-ron help things through the cynical worldview that’s embedded into the fabric of the film.