South Korean film “The Hill of Secrets” is a seemingly simple coming-of-age tale which turns out to be much more complex than expected. As calmly and sensitively observing its little young heroine’s secrets and lies along the story, the movie is quite amusing or suspenseful at times, and we come to understand and empathize more with her ongoing emotional struggles with not only herself but also her family.

The movie, which is incidentally set in 1996, mainly revolves around Myeong-eun (Lee Ji-eun), a 11-year-old elementary school girl who is quite sensitive about how she is regarded by her schoolmates and their classroom teacher. During the opening scene, we see her trying to choose anything good enough as a gift to her classroom teacher, and we are amused a bit as she becomes rather capricious about a little packaging detail of her gift at the last minute.

At the classroom, Myeong-eun presents herself as best as she can when she later runs for the prefect. She makes a direct and forthright speech with an actually possible promise for her classmates, and she eventually wins the election to her delight, but her parents are not so impressed by this at all because they are mostly occupied with each own business. While her father Seong-ho (Kang Gil-woo) is nothing but a pathetic unemployed loser who usually kills his free time at his wife’s little shop located in a local marketplace, her mother Kyeong-hee (Jang Sun) is usually busy with her work, and their attention is often drawn more to Myeong-eun’s older brother Min-gyoo (Choi Hyeon-jin).

Just like Kyeong-hee is sick of her family, Myeong-eun is tired of her family, and that is the main reason why she has lied about her family to her classroom teacher and classmates. She often says that her father works in some company while her mother is just a plain housewife, but, unfortunately, she must stick to her lies more when she begins to serve as the class prefect. While she is pretty helpful to her classroom teacher via providing a number of good ideas for education and enlightenment, she also has to evade any question about her family more than before, and she even goes for bigger lies when one of her classmates shows some doubt about what she has been saying about her family.

Meanwhile, her classroom teacher encourages Myeong-eun to participate in an essay contest to be held in the school. What she writes is not exactly as truthful as demanded, but she comes to show considerable potentials in writing, and her classroom teacher gladly keeps encouraging her, though Myeong-eun’s mother is not so impressed in contrast to her husband.

As we wonder more about how much our little young heroine can contain her lies and secrets, there comes a little change into her classroom on one day. A girl named Hye-jin (Jang Jae-hee) is transferred to the school along with her “biovular twin sister”, and this girl does not mince any word about her rather shabby family background right from her first day in Myeong-eun’s classroom. In addition, she and her sister can also write several personal essays which appeal to others more than the ones written by Myeong-eun, and Myeong-eun cannot help but envy these two sisters in more than one way. When her classroom teacher instructs her to participate in a big local essay contest for elementary students, she surely tries her best, but it looks like she cannot possibly beat whatever is written by these two sisters.

To Myeong-eun’s surprise, Hye-jin and her sister do not hesitate to befriend Myeong-eun, and they indirectly give her an advice pretty useful for any aspiring young writer out there. While their essays may not be that terrific, their brutal honesty on their messy family and school life always draws attention as they sardonically admit at one point, and that is where the undeniable emotional power of their writing lies.

Impressed by how Hye-jin and her sister cope with their harsh reality via outright honesty instead of lies and secrets, Myeong-eun decides to be much more truthful than before in another essay to be sent out to that local essay contest, and the mood becomes lyrically pensive as she comes to reflect more on her life and family via her more truthful writing. She still does not like her family much, but they are an undeniable fact of her life nonetheless, and she actually feels better as letting out all the confusion and frustration inside her.

However, when that essay comes to receive much more attention than expected, Myeong-eun finds herself suddenly stuck in a very difficult situation, and that is where the movie becomes a bit more tense than before. As Myeong-eun comes to tremble and implode under the consequence of her secrets and lies, young performer Moon Seung-ah is superlative as palpably conveying to us her character’s growing inner conflict, and there is an intense but ultimately poignant conversation scene where Myeong-eun desperately tries to get some help from her classroom teacher, who turns out to be more patient and thoughtful than she seems on the surface.

Director/writer Lee Ji-eun, who makes a feature film debut here, also places a number of good performers around her young lead actress. While Lim Sun-woo is terrific as Myeong-eun’s flawed but well-intentioned class teacher, Jang Sun and Kang Gil-woo bring some human complexity to Myeong eun’s parents, Jang Jae-hee, Kwak Jin-moo, Moon Seo-hyeon, Choi Hyeon-jin, and Lee Dong-chan are also solid in their respective supporting roles.

Overall, “The Hill of Secrets” leaves indelible impressions on us via its sensitive handling of story and characters, and it is certainly one of the best South Korean films of this year. When it eventually arrives at the end of her emotional journey along the story, I came to care about its little young heroine a lot more than I expected, and that is surely an achievement to say the least.