Kotpanum chonio

In the 1970's and 80's, Kim Jong-il, son of North Korea's leader Kim Il-Sung, led the DPRK's film industry. He picked the subjects and led the productions personally. "Kotpanum chonio" (The Flower Girl, 1972) is often viewed to be the country's "Citizen Kane", though it too is made to serve the national Juche ideology. This was the only North Korean film to win a prize outside the country, and it was an audience hit in many Asian countries. The film is said to be based on a play by the leader Kim Il-Sung himself, no less.

Set during the Japanese occupation, "The Flower Girl" tells the story of Kotpun, a young girl who is forced to sell flowers in order to make enough money to buy medicine for her sick mother. She also has to take care of her younger sister, which is not easy in a country run by the brutal Japanese imperial forces. The film is a melodrama, though in the usual North Korean fashion, every now and then we get a song that describes the plot to us, though it really needn't. This is part of the reason why the film feels slow and goes on for two hours. Halfway through, we find out about the existence of a spoken-word narrator, which is just bad film-making.

DPRK cinema is a hobby of mine. I have seen about 50 films from North Korea. Though it is enormously beloved in its home country, "The Flower Girl" is not one of their best, at least in my opinion. It is less straightforward in its propaganda, which is good, but the film-makers should have toned down the melodramatic elements. The film is loud, and there is crying in nearly every scene. The plot is not half bad, and for once the nationalist flavor of a DPRK production stems from actually showing, how bad things used to be for the poor people. This could be a good film, had it been made better.

For me, "The Flower Girl" is more comedic than it is moving. It tries to make every scene into a climax by always picking the plot continuation, that has the biggest emotional impact. That's not how good movies work and it also makes the film very predictable for anyone who loves to watch better melodramas, like I do.

"The Flower Girl" is a good introduction to DPRK film industry. It is an interesting curiosity, but not a classic of world cinema.

The Flower Girl is a North Korean film which is known to be the "Citizen Kane of North Korea" and I'll just tell you right now that it's nowhere near the quality of Citizen Kane, so don't expect much from this film.

The story is set during the 1930s, and is based on the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement during the period of Japanese occupation in Korea. A poor, rural girl, around whom the plot is centred, picks flowers on the mountain every day to sell at the market, to care for her ill mother.

This movie feels so unnecessary in existing and I have so many questions for this movie because of the plot-holes they've created in the structure of this story. So straight away I already found a way to improve the movie. Because of how many songs are sung during the film, why not make it a musical? It would be a more enjoyable and impressive movie if they made it a musical because of how unneeded they are due to the story being SO predictical to the movie because we know what's going to happen next. For a simpler way to show people how the little sister went blind, why not just put it at the start of the movie, instead of having it as a flashback 25 minutes into the movie? It would make the story flow better and make it less complicated to follow. I could go on all day with the plot-holes that the story created, but I just want to point out 1 more thing: There is a random narrator that comes in once during the movie and never narrates anything again. WHY?! That's very lazy writing, I'm not impressed at all, writers.

The songs in this movie are pretty, yet useless to the movie, because all they do is sing about what just happened in that very same scene. I don't have much else to add to the songs.

I will give credit to the child actors in this movie, I think their performances are pretty decent compared to the adults in this movie. Speaking of the other actors in this movie, I think the acting is okay at best. I don't find any performances memorable except for the woman who made the little sister blind.

What makes this movie seem comedic to me that it feels like a Shakespeare ripoff. Every moment is a tragedy that's happening around every 5-10 minutes. But that is what makes this film so predictable, you know what's going to happen around every corner because it's always been a tragic moment through the plot. Not to mention how slow the pacing seems to be felt dragged out for way too long.

Another problem I came across with this movie is the character development. To make your characters mean something to the story, you have to make some development to your characters otherwise it'll make the movie more forgettable. It's simple stuff, and doesn't take long to come up with, always make your characters interesting and/or relatable with your storytelling.

Overall, This film has no meaning. I was very underwhelmed and disappointed with The Flower Girl and I don't know why North Korea thinks that this is their best film, but it might be cultural differences compared to the films we have overseas. I don't know what North Korea's other films are like but from a foreigner's point of view, I don't think that this is the best film that North Korea can offer to me.