When I sat down here in 2022 to watch the 2009 South Korean drama "Yeo-haeng-ja" (aka "A Brand New Life"),then I had never heard about the movie before. So writer and director Ounie Lecomte had every opportunity to bedazzle and entertain me.

While I have no idea what life in an orphanage would be like in the 1970s South Korean, then I will say that writer and director Ounie Lecomte definitely managed to put together a rather emotional and beautiful movie here with "Yeo-haeng-ja".

But it was not only the writing and the storyline that made "Yeo-haeng-ja" a good movie. No, it was also very much because of some really amazing acting performances, especially by Kim Sae-Ron, Do Yeon Park and Ko Asung.

It should be noted that "Yeo-haeng-ja" is a slow paced movie, even for a drama. So it is a movie that might not find a base with just anyone in the audience, as it requires a particular mindset and mood to delve into the movie and enjoy it. There is just a sense of realism and sadness about the movie that permeates the entire movie, and it does creep in under the skin.

I will say, though, that I was adequately entertained by "Yeo-haeng-ja". However, it is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time around, as the storyline just doesn't have the contents to support a second viewing.

My rating of "Yeo-haeng-ja" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Winner of the Best Asian Film Award at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival, and screened out of competition at Cannes this year, writer-director Ounie Lecomte's debut feature film is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young South Korean girl who got abandoned by her single dad to an orphanage where she yearns a life of normalcy, still harbouring hopes that she'll be reunited with the only family she knows.

One can imagine just how much reference from Lecomte's own life got written into the film. Being unable to speak Korean and has French as a first language herself, Lecomte's tale follows the adventures of Jinhee (Kim Sae Ron),a precocious little girl who ends up in France which probably accounted for the director's own language skills or the lack thereof in her native tongue, and throughout the story you'll find it pretty heart-wrenching especially when Jinhee tries to resist blending into the scheme of things in the orphanage, knowing that to go with the flow will mean to surrender all memory of her loved one and life as she knew, to making herself appealing for a new foster family to pick her up for adoption.

Thus beneath the exterior sweetness lies strong feelings of resentment and anger even, being unable to fathom how her dad can give her up so that she can supposedly lead a better life in a foster home in the mid 70s Korea, and likely one to be overseas given the kind of folks who drop by the orphanage to look for children to adopt. The story's episodic in nature as the orphanage serves as a temporary holding point in her life in between a giant leap of change, and flits between how Jinhee finds every opportunity to resist change, and how each time she embraces a little change through friendships forged, her heart gets broken all over again.

And having one's heart broken too many times probably doesn't bode well for a proper, balanced development, given that her trust with loved ones and friends got betrayed in the highest order. The gem and revelation of the film is the tour de force performance by Kim Sae Ron as Jinhee, who almost single-handedly lifts the film from start to finish giving an unbelievably strong performance for her age, dealing with the range of positive and negative emotions like a seasoned veteran.

You can't help but to fall in love with the little girl, and share in her despair at being abandoned, and weep a little with her when promises made become shattered. Casting Sae Ron is a stroke of brilliance, as the actress' performance was key to make or break this film, and thankfully, she was the miracle to breathe life into what was a straightforward story dealing with human emotions, nevermind the bleak landscape that spelt doom and gloom. This performance alone is well worth getting a ticket to the film.

I read some of the reviews for this film and I agree, this is a pretty depressing and yet engaging movie but the audience will be left wanting more when the credits starts rolling and not because the movie is mind blowing or anything. And Son Rae Kim was just perfect for this role, she is a very good actress for her age and is looking forward for her to make it in the movie business. The other children in the movie did a fine job as well. But I am just curious why a big time actor such as Kyung-gu Sol played a very small part as Jinhee's father, when anyone else could have done the role since it doesn't even show his face. This is the first movie I saw about children in the Korean orphanage, and was well worth the time. It was sad watching the children in the movie struggling and doing there best to get adopted and to know the problem of many children ending up in the orphanages still goes on today.

7.8/10