South Korean documentary film “Her 5th Room” is a small but intimate personal story about one middle-aged woman who simply needs to have her own private space. As closely and sensitively observing her struggle for privacy and independence, the documentary often gives us aching emotional moments to remember, and we are eventually touched by when she finally decides to step forward more for what she has yearned for many years.

She is the mother of director/co-producer Jeon Chan-young, and the documentary opens with Jeon moving from Busan to her family residence in Daegu. For around 30 years, Jeon’s mother has lived with her husband and parents-in-laws in a two-story house, and Jeon tells us how her mother’s status has been upgraded a bit during last several years. When they married many years ago, Jeon’s mother and her husband were allowed to occupy a small room together while the big main bedroom belonged to her parents-ln-laws. After her father-in-law died and then she became the breadwinner of the family after her husband lost his job, Jeon’s mother was allowed to have the main bedroom. However, she subsequently decides to move up the room on the second floor, mainly because she really needs a place where she can work without any interruption from her other family members including her husband.

Jeon’s mother has worked as a qualified freelance counselor, and we see how she works here and there when she is not working in her family residence. At one point early in the documentary, she gives a little lecture to a group of people who come with their respective foreign spouses, and it is apparent that she is really proud and passionate about her current profession.

However, Jeon’s mother is still not that happy as often feeling like an outsider who has just been stuck with others in the house for years. When she was a young country girl who got fallen in love with her future husband, everything seemed to be going well for both of them, but they found themselves depending a lot on his parents in many ways after their wedding, and she was expected to take care of a lot things in the house for many years just because she was the wife of the only son of her parents-in-laws.

Moreover, her husband has not been much help to her for many years. Right from his first scene in the documentary, it is apparent that he is a useless old bum who has taken everything for granted, and we later get to know more about his worse sides. For example, he often drinks a lot whenever he gets a chance, and then he frequently annoys and interrupts his wife even though she has a lot of works to do besides those usual domestic stuffs to handle.

And then there comes an eventual breaking point for Jeon’s mother later in the documentary. Her mother-in-law suddenly makes an unexpected decision involved with the ownership of the family residence, and this hurts her feeling for good reasons. As the camera calmly observes their conversation from a static position, Jeon’s mother cannot help but show more and more of her anger and frustration while arguing with her mother-in-law, and this moment is often painful to watch for us.

In addition, her husband’s drinking habit gets worse day by day. At the funeral of one of her close family members, he happens to clash with some of her family members while getting quite drunk, and this surely exasperates his wife more than ever. In the end, Jeon’s mother and her children come to have a sort of intervention meeting between them and her husband, and we come to learn more about how much she and her children have endured and dealt with her husband’s alcoholism and occasional domestic violence.

While rightfully siding with her mother, Jeon also tries to give a fair chance to her father at least even though she comes to dislike her father more than before. Later in the documentary, she shows him several key moments in the documentary, but he just casually recognizes that he is indeed the villain of her documentary, and he does not even feel much regret or repentance on that. You may come to feel some pity to this incorrigible old man who still does not grasp at all how much he has hurt his family members for many years, and then you will become more disgusted when he drinks a lot again to cause another annoyance for his wife.

After that, Jeon’s mother finally decides that enough is enough, and what she does next is quite sensible to say the least. Now she feels more hopeful and optimistic than ever, and that makes a big contrast with her husband’s more pathetic status. While she is ready to move onto the next chapter of her life, he does not seem to know what to do next, and that will probably be continued to the end of his life.

On the whole, “The 5th Room” works as a sincere and touching family story, and Jeon presents her family members with enough care and respect despite her complex feelings about some of them. Although it could show us more in my humble opinion, the documentary is fairly solid and impactful within its rather short running time (81 minutes), and the result is one of more engaging South Korean documentaries of this year.