South Korean film “Jeong-sun”, which was belatedly released in South Korea in this week (It was premiered at the Jeonju International Film Festival in May 2022, where it received the Grand Prize award), is a dry but intense character drama revolving around one infuriating circumstance. As its heroine tries to cope with her undeniably painful and gloomy situation, the movie lets us more compassion and empathy on her, and that is why it really earns a little moment of personal healing and recovery around the end of the story.

The early part of the film slowly establishes the daily life of Jeong-sun (Kim Geum-soon), a middle-aged single woman who has earned her living via working in some small food factory. Although her current job does not pay her that much, she is proud of being a working woman who can take care of herself, and she does not lose her spirit at all even though she is often chided by her male foreman, who is incidentally much younger than her.

As her daughter Yoo-jin (Yoon-geum Seon-ah) will soon marry, Jeong-sun comes to think more about what she is going to do with the rest of her life, and then there comes an unexpected opportunity via Yeong-su (Jo Hyun-woo), a newly employed guy who happens to be around her age. As time goes by, both Jeong-sun and Yeong-su find themselves attracted more to each other as two lonely single persons, and they eventually start to have a secret romantic relationship without telling anything at all to their co-workers.

However, it does not take much time for their co-workers to notice something from them, and this naturally puts some strain on their relationship. When Jeong-sun unintentionally hurts his feeling at one point, Yeong-su becomes rather nasty to her, and this certainly baffles Jeong-sun. Nevertheless, she eventually misses Yeong-su, and, what do you know, they come to have another private time together in his shabby motel room.

During this supposedly time, Jeong-sun lets Yeong-su record her with his smartphone when she is singing a song while only wearing her underwears, but, unfortunately, this later turns out to be a serious big mistake. A few days later, many of their co-workers begin to talk about her behind their back, and then she belatedly discovers that Yeong-su had spread out that embarrassing private video of hers to some of their co-workers, who also spread it out on the Internet without much thought.

Around the time when Yoo-jin also comes to learn about what happened to her mother, Jeong-sun becomes so traumatized that she barely speaks or responds to her daughter, who comes to take care of the aftermath on behalf of her mother. She immediately goes to the local police, and Yeong-su and several other co-workers are subsequently investigated, but she becomes more frustrated to see that there is nothing much she can do for her mother except standing by her mother as much as possible.

And we see more of how Jeong-sun becomes more conflicted and tormented in her traumatized status. At one point, she is suddenly visited by Yeong-su, who may get legally punished for what he did to her. He seems sincere in his apology while also asking for some mercy from her, but this only exacerbates her trauma and shame. She eventually tries to pull herself together and then move on, but, not so surprisingly, there later comes a moment when she comes to realize how much she still feels angry and hurt inside her mind.

While mostly looking calm and plain, Kim Geum-soon is simply terrific in what can be a breakthrough performance in her acting career. Ably conveying to us what is silently churning inside her character’s traumatized mind, she gradually holds our attention along the story, and we come to feel more of her character’s pain and anger. Yes, there inevitably come a couple of big scenes where her character finally lets out what she has desperately been hiding and suppressing for a while, but these big moments do not feel contrived at all thanks to the aching emotional intensity of Kim’s commendable performance.

Several supporting performers surrounding Kim are also effective in their respective parts. As Jeong-sun’s devoted daughter, Yoon-geum Seon-ah holds her own place well during her several key scenes with Kim, and she also did a good job of bringing enough amount of life and personality to her plucky character. In case of Jo Hyun-woo, he is suitably pathetic while not making any excuse on his character’s thoughtlessly terrible action, and it goes without saying that his character richly deserves all the anger and wrath from Jeong-sun.

Overall, “Jeong-sun”, which is incidentally the first feature film of director/writer Jeong Ji-hye, is a modest but engaging female film to be admired for its solid storytelling and Kim’s harrowing lead performance. Although you might not notice her before, Kim has diligently appeared in a number of different films ranging from “Train to Busan” (2016) to “Juhee from 5 to 7” (2022) during last several years, and “Jeong-sun” finally gives her a precious chance for demonstrating more of her considerable presence and talent. I assure you that will never forget her and her character after watching “Jeong-sun”, and I also sincerely hope that the movie will lead this wonderful actress to more good opportunities out there during next several years.