Honja saneun saramdeul

I am really surprised - though honestly not shocked - that more people don't note that the glaring truth of this film is that it's about the invasion of Western capitalism in South Korea. The more SK has Westernized, the more its people have the same problems as anyone stuck in a capitalist grind.

The main character is basically a robot who takes abuse constantly in her job as a customer service agent who answers phones for a credit card company. She handles every call with rational detachment and feigned politeness, obeying the commands of rude and irrational customers who don't see her as a person.

Jina's plight is further complicated by her bottled up grief over the death of her mother. It takes the death of a neighbor, who appears to her as a ghost, and a young, needy trainee at work to reach into Jina's solitary world of work and television.

Film, like all art forms, has to offer us something personally. That also means that there will be lot of film that just never click. I would ask those who were bored, however, that they consider what the director was trying to do. Here we have a young woman who has fallen into a sort of despair. She works at a call answering service for a credit card company. We get to see how this could be really unpleasant. People often call because their own incompetence led them there. Some are angry because they needed their cards to work but they don't. And some treat these operators as if they were like minded friends. One guy has supposedly built a time machine and he doesn't want to carry cash into the past. He is a frequent caller and always gets the same response. What has happened to this young woman as that her life has become so consistently withdrawn, that she has lost all the joy. A man dies next door to her, and it turns out she never really knew him. She retreats to her apartment and shuts out the outside. Her father has become a widower and she can't handle his loneliness and rejects him out of hand. Eventually, she gets an epiphany from a young woman whose incompetence invites her cruelty. But there is much more to the story. I rather enjoyed this.

Human beings thrive on connections, it's in our nature. In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle, to isolate in the name of survival. But deep down, we all crave human touch, that sense of belonging.

"Aloners" by Hong Seong-eun expertly captures this essence. It serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of human connection in a society that is increasingly losing touch with humanity.

Perhaps it's high time for us to take a page out of our protagonist, Jina's book and begin to truly live. Let us embrace the chaos, the messiness of human relationships, all the highs and lows, and rediscover the beauty of empathy and human connection.

"To tell you the truth, I am not cut out for eating alone. Or sleeping alone or taking the bus alone. I don't like smoking alone. I am no good on my own. I just pretend to be."

Summary

Notable directorial debut by the Korean Hong Sung-eun, which exposes with a subtlety as extraordinary as it is forceful the crisis of a young woman who chose solitude as a way of life.

Review

A young woman leads a solitary existence until certain events begin to question that way of life.

Jina (or Jin-ah) works in a credit card customer service call center. She is a holojok, a term that defines in South Korea people who live alone in cities, without relatives, partners or friends. She avoids as much as possible any contact and verbal communication, unless it is unavoidable. The film recounts how certain circumstances begin to crack this emotional strength: the reunion with her father, being forced to train a new employee, the death of a neighbor, circumstances that force her to socialize and that in some cases constitute an uncomfortable mirror.

Hong Sung-eun's remarkable debut feature exposes with extraordinary subtlety what Jina is feeling (she is not the only lonely one in the story), in front of that game of mirrors that speak to her of her present and perhaps of her future and those interactions who lives as intrusions in his world dominated by efficient and dispassionate work and permanent connection to screens. The story is not content with sticking to the drama, but rather adds some disturbing elements and few but accurate touches of humor, creating a climate that captures the viewer. And always with what I call the "elegance" of South Korean fiction.

All of this could not work without the extraordinary performance of Gong Seung-yeon as Jina, who owns a mask of infinite shades that perfectly describe what she expresses and suggest what she hides.

Aloners swiftly enchants its viewers with quiet and simple images that slowly build up the solitude of our protagonist. Ji-na isn't per se lonely, she might not even be unhappy, she simply chose to be alone, wafting through the weeks with single lunches and the ever-accompanying noise of technology. When a few encounters threaten to unravel her solitude she is forced to face her past, present and future. Hong Sung-eun's debut is so tender and warm and struck a deep cord within me. The way she uses the camera to portray Ji-Na's life, always focused, always following the same movements, never shattering to slowly making the young woman re-experience her surroundings is incredibly powerful. I especially appreciated Gong Seung-yeon's delicate performance as well as the script's refusal to make its aloners a bad thing - there can be comfort in being alone, and there might be a different comfort in finally connecting with people and life again. Absolutely incredible!