Microhabitat

This movie really make me thinking about life. The plot is simple but for some reason it can touch my heart. I also like the acting a lot. The meaning behind the story is subtle enough and I like it a lot.

Microhabitat is quietly funny in that dry, blink-and-you'll miss it sort of way. Jeon Go-woon's debut is a subtle but assured sly satire about how utterly absurd adulthood turns out to be. The story follows Miso, played with pitch-perfect restraint by Esom, a character whose struggle to afford life's small pleasures in a world that demands too much and gives too little is all too relatable. Her choice of cigarettes and alcohol over her flat is a stark reflection of the compromises many of us make. What follows is a sofa-surfing odyssey through the crumbling dreams of her so-called friends, now the so-called 'adults'.

Each stop is a mini-tragicomic gem. Her sister, in the glamourous corporate job, which turns out to be little more than serfdom, held together by intravenous supplements, for which she undertook a nursing qualification to administer (the most valuable training she's taken). The joyless new parents, the pitiful man-child, a 50-year-old living with his parents, who support his attempts of abduction in order to marry him off. There's bleak satire in every corner-an unflinching look at how adulthood has failed us all. Never cruel-just painfully recognisable.

Miso's drifting detachment has hardened into something more radical. She begins to see those who've conformed as traitors-sell-outs to a broken system. Her lifestyle becomes a quiet manifesto, a rebellion against the rat race. Her freedom unsettles those who've buckled down, exposing their choices as cowardice. What begins as a story of survival turns into a powerful critique of societal norms. It's bleak, funny, and strangely empowering, leaving the audience enlightened and thoughtful.

The third act lands with a quiet, aching finality. As Miso's boyfriend confesses he's trading his dreams for stability, the film crystallises its core heartbreak-not just that adulthood is disappointing, but that even the dreamers eventually surrender. His choice isn't cruel, just crushingly ordinary. It's the slow erosion of hope that stings most. The time jump that follows is disorienting, deliberately so. Her old bandmates speak of Miso at a funeral with the hollow nostalgia of people who've long buried their idealism. Their words are polite, rehearsed, meaningless-revealing more about their own resignation than about her. And then, in a wordless, lingering moment, we glimpse a woman-greying, solitary, and still moving forward. Whether it's truly Miso or just her ghost doesn't matter. What matters is the sense that she never gave in. In a world that wears everyone down, her continued existence feels like a quiet act of defiance.

Microhabitat brilliantly mocks the illusions of adulthood with a knowing, bitter chuckle. Bleakly funny, oddly moving, and wonderfully observed.

Clean, simple but obsessive.

That's all I would say about the gem that somehow I missed for 4 years. The film started with a soft, simple story about the girl who decided to stay at her friends' house to save up for other's important things: whiskey and cigarettes. But from that seem-to-be simple and somehow stupid idea, the film touched the deepest meaning of life, the consequences of every decisions we made in life, about the true difference that distinguish one from the others. You will find your eyes locked in the screen from the beginning to the very end.

The acting is extremely elegant, the dialogues are touching and funny, but the best things I can say about this movie is its cinematography. No crazy 90-minute one-take, no dolly zoom or breath-taking over view from some imaginary helicopter, the cinematography of the film is perfect that I won't even look for it. A well deserved praise for the director who I believe master the art of film.

I won't hesitate to recommend this film to anyone who truly want to understand the Eastern cultures, understand the people working under the pressure of society, and the life we really want to live, that somehow we have to find and fight for every single days of our life.

As a fan of Korean movies I was looking forward to watching Sogongnyeo (or Microhabitat for the English title). It got a high rating on here and Korean cinema produced a lot of excellent movies so it was promising. But in the end it was disappointing to me. The story is a bit boring, certainly towards the second half, a bit repeating itself, nothing really enjoyable to follow. It has a couple good scenes and the acting wasn't bad but that's about it. I just think it's not really the kind of stories I enjoy watching, but others might do.

... even though it's not my house.

The more I watch productions from regions whose culture hasn't been deeply influenced - until recently - by western culture, the more I'm undecided on my capacity to judge them. Had this movie been produced in Germany or the Uk I would have given it a 4-5 for its restrained gaze, farcical tone and not particularly original themes. But I'll give it a cosmopolitan benefit of the doubt.

The film shows how willing people are to settle for less than ideal socio-economic bargains, just for inexperience or social pressures, actually ruining their lifes. And how outsiders are dissed, blamed and ultimately discriminated (though the movie doesn't show that much) for their choices.

Unfortunately the film feels a little too surreal to my eyes: things seem forcibly represented as cute and fine and often even comical where I'd expect struggling, drama and wounds. And while I guess that may well be my bias towards realism, the result is that overall the production fell a little flat.

The conclusion too left me cold: a more direct collision against hypocrisy and conformism would have made everything more meaningful. Instead we are left believing that outsiders aren't going to get crushed by the rest of society and will do just fine.

A cute little fell-good movie whose social critique doesn't really hit... unless OFC the purpose wasn't hitting in the first place but a more gentle reproach.