South Korean independent film “Waterdrop” is a somber but sad story about two different kids who simply do not want to be left alone. As closely and sensitively observing their respective emotional struggles along the story, the movie often becomes a bit tense with their pain and desperation, and we come to care more about them with some empathy and understanding.

At first, the movie begins with how things suddenly became quite serious for a 13-year-old girl named Soo-yeon (Kim Bo-min). Due to her parents’ absence (the movie never explains to us why they left her, by the way), her maternal grandmother had to raise up Soo-yeon alone by herself in her little shabby apartment, and she was pretty much like a mother to Soo-yeon, but, alas, she recently died as shown from the opening scene of the film.

Needless to say, Soo-yeon needs any close adult family member who can be a legal guardian for her, but the situation is pretty hopeless to say the least. Besides her parents, the only other candidate is her grandmother’s husband, but he has also been gone for years, so it is quite possible that Soo-yeon will be sent to a facility for orphans or a foster family to take care of her.

This is definitely the last thing Soo-yeon wants, but there is no one around her who is willing to take care of her. In case of the family of a girl who is supposed to be her best friend, she soon sees how she is not welcomed much by them. In case of the Christian family of a neighborhood boy who seems interested in getting closer to her, she soon feels suffocated by their hypocrisy, while we observe more of the boy’s very unpleasant sides.

And then one particularly family comes to draw Soo-yeon’s attention on one day. There is a couple doing a YouTube channel showing a bit of their family life with a little adopted girl named Seon-yool (Choi Lee-rang), and it seems that the couple is going to adopt another kid. Watching how happy they look with Seon-yool, Soo-yeon comes to have an idea of getting herself adopted by this couple, and she soon approaches to Seon-yool, who has no problem with befriending her even though Soo-yeon is a total stranger to her from the very beginning.

Anyway, Soo-yeon later encounters Seon-yool’s adoptive mother, who seems delighted to see that Seon-yool found a friend to play with. She even invites Soo-yeon to her apartment, and Soo-yeon grabs this opportunity without any hesitation. As she gets herself more involved with Seon-yool and her adoptive parents, she naturally comes to open herself more to Seon-yool’s adoptive parents for making them like her more, and it looks like her sneaky plan will succeed before she is sent away to somewhere.

However, of course, we can clearly see that there is no chance for Soo-yeon to get adopted by Seon-yool’s adoptive parents, as noticing more of the pretension behind their supposedly pleasant appearance. For example, you may notice how clean and untouched the kitchen inside their apartment is, when Soo-yeon demonstrates a bit of her cooking skill to them at one point. Above all, there is something really odd about Seon-yool, and this often bothers Soo-yeon a lot. While she looks mostly fine whenever she plays with Soo-yeon, Seon-yool looks curiously detached whenever she is with her adoptive parents, and she also often shows some strange behavior at night.

Not so surprisingly, it gradually turns out that Seon-yool’s adoptive parents are not exactly who they seem to be on the surface, but the screenplay by director/writer Choi Jong-yong, who incidentally makes a feature film debut here, takes its time as steadily sticking to the viewpoint of its two young main characters. As time is running out for her, Soo-yeon desperately sticks to her plan, but it only becomes more evident that she gets herself involved in a bigger trouble, and Seon-yool turns out to have rather complicated feelings about her relationship with Soo-yeon.

Although its narrative flow becomes a bit too jumpy as Soo-yeon and Seon-yool are driven into more anxiety and desperation, the movie remains supported well by the two wonderful performances from its two remarkable young performers. Kim Bo-min ably holds the center as required, and she is quite convincing especially when her character uses honesty for more ingratiation toward Seon-yool’s adoptive parents. On the opposite, Choi Lee-rang effortlessly embodies her tricky role without any misstep at all, and she has an achingly poignant moment when her character directly points out Soo-yeon’s dishonest intention later in the story. In case of several adult performers in the film, they dutifully fill their respective spots around the story without overshadowing Kim and Choi at all, and Kim Hyun-jung and Jin Dae-yeon did a commendable job of imbuing their characters with a banal undertone of insincerity.

On the whole, “Waterdrop”, whose English title incidentally comes from Seon-yool’s little drawing (The original Korean title is “Soo-yeon’s Seon-yool”, by the way), is often uneasy to watch for good reasons, but it still holds our attention thanks to its good storytelling and performance, and you may be relieved by a little glimpse of hope at the end of the story. Yes, there is still a lot of uncertainty in front of them, but they will probably move on despite growing up too early, and we can only hope the best for them.