South Korean film “SAVE” follows the relationship between two women who cannot possibly be different from each other. Right from the beginning, we can clearly see where their story is heading, but the movie did a solid job of bringing enough life and personality to its two contrasting lead characters, and we come to care about their odd relationship more – even when the story becomes rather melodramatic.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Se-jong (Kim Pu-reun), a young female adult preparing for independence after growing up in an orphanage during last several years. While she has earned her living as an employee of a local beauty parlor, Se-jong also receives a settlement fund of 5 million won, and she has already been planning to use this money for renting any suitable place to stay.

And then someone quite unexpected appears in front of Se-jong on one day. She is a woman named Eun-sook (Song Seon-mi), and she says that she is the one who saved Se-jong’s life many years ago. At that time, Se-jong was a young baby living with her single mother at a shelter for women like Se-jong’s mother, and, as shown from a brief flashback at the beginning of the film, there was a big fire incident on Se-jong’s first birthday. While Se-jong’s mother did not survive at that time, Se-jong was saved by some other woman in the shelter, and Eun-sook claims that she is that woman in question.

Mainly because she does not have much memory of her lifesaver, Se-jong begins to suspect Eun-sook, after Eun-sook asks Se-jong to give 5 million won. According to Eun-sook, she needs to have a surgery right now due to having a serious case of cancer, but Se-jong cannot trust her that much. In fact, she even checks on the remaining records from that shelter, but she is only confirmed that Eun-soon was indeed with Se-jong’s mother at that time.

Meanwhile, the situation suddenly becomes quite bad for Se-jong, who belatedly realizes that she lost all of her settlement fun due to a nasty case of real estate fraud. Because she officially graduated from her orphanage, she cannot possibly go back there, so she has no choice but to contact Eun-sook, who willingly lets her into her current staying place.

Although the mood between them is pretty awkward at first, Eun-sook shows more generosity to Se-jong than expected. Besides kindly letting Se-jong stay longer at her residence, she also embarks on helping Se-jong a bit on retrieving her stolen money. Thanks to a few useful clues, Se-jong and Eun-sook soon begin to locate a certain figure involved with that real estate fraud, and it does not take much time for them to make that figure in question quite agitated to say the least.

Needless to say, Eun-sook gradually looks like a surrogate mother to Se-jong as time goes by. Just like many other socially awkward people, Se-jong is sometimes too naïve and passive, and Eun-sook often advises Se-jong that she should be more active and tougher for handling many matters to come in her beginning adult life. Although she still regards Eun-sook with some reservation, Se-jong comes to depend more on Eun-sook, and Eun-sook seems to care more about Se-jong, but she remains rather elusive to Se-jong even at that point.

Needless to say, the circumstance between our two heroines eventually becomes more serious, but the movie does not lose any of its lightweight tone despite that. While clearly recognizing how things can be really bad for Se-jong and many other young people like her, the movie also shows some humor and warmth as leisurely rolling its main characters along the story, and its last act is accompanied with real emotions even during its expected melodramatic finale. We are not so surprised when Se-jong and Eun-sook’s relationship turns out to be a little more complex than expected, but we are also touched as observing more of the emotional bond between them.

It helps that the movie is carried well by the good duo performance from its two lead actresses, who ably complement each other from the beginning to the end. Although I am not so familiar with her movie acting career, I can tell you at least that Kim Pu-reum is a promising actress with enough talent and presence, and she is convincing as her rather docile character goes through her bumpy course of emotional maturation along the story. On the opposite, Song Seon-mi, who has been mainly known for her appearances in a number of Hong Sang-soo’s movies such as “Walk Up” (2022) and “In Our Day” (2023), brings genuine human nuances to several key scenes of hers in the film, and you may come to forgive her deeply flawed human character to some degree. Around Kim and Song, Heo Jung-do and Lee Ye-jin have each own moment as the two substantial supporting characters in the story, and Heo brings a bit of extra humor as a man who still cares a lot about Eun-sook despite all the troubles between them.

Overall, “SAVE” is fairly engaging mainly thanks to not only its two engaging lead characters but also the strong performances behind them. Although this is her first feature film, director/writer/editor Bang Mi-ri demonstrates here that she is another promising new South Korean filmmaker to watch, and it will be interesting to see what may come next from her after this commendable debut work of hers.