Uma Vida Nova em Folha

I read some of the reviews for this film and I agree, this is a pretty depressing and yet engaging movie but the audience will be left wanting more when the credits starts rolling and not because the movie is mind blowing or anything. And Son Rae Kim was just perfect for this role, she is a very good actress for her age and is looking forward for her to make it in the movie business. The other children in the movie did a fine job as well. But I am just curious why a big time actor such as Kyung-gu Sol played a very small part as Jinhee's father, when anyone else could have done the role since it doesn't even show his face. This is the first movie I saw about children in the Korean orphanage, and was well worth the time. It was sad watching the children in the movie struggling and doing there best to get adopted and to know the problem of many children ending up in the orphanages still goes on today.

7.8/10

What kind of story would attract the acclaimed South Korean director Lee Chang-Dong's support and serving as a producer? (So far he has only served as a producer of two films. He was even only an executive producer of his own work "Secret Sunshine." I have to also mention that the film's French producer Laurent Lavolé was the guest who I honorably hosted in the Taipei Film Festival in 2008.) "A Brand New Life" is such a simple but moving film from the new French Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte. Based on her personal experience as a child, she sincerely shares this poignant but very inspiring childhood memories to the audience around the world.

Jinhee was taken out on a trip by her father. Her father bought a wide range of gifts, they ate lots of delicious food, and he even gave her a big cake, but it all turned to a different direction once they set their feet into a children's monastery shelter. It turned out that Jinhee's life will never be the same ever since. This has a similar premise as the famous fairy tale "The Little Princess" by the British writer Frances Hodgson Burnett. Though we think that there would be another harsh supervisor and several kids who try to bully her here through Jinhee's eyes, fortunately, the reality is not entirely so tragic.

The supervisor seems harsh, but in fact, she has a loving heart under her icy face; the crippled sister, who's the oldest among the children, sadly took her fate after the unsuccessful struggle; Sookhee is already an older child than most, she seems capricious at first, but she's very sympathetic underneath. She and Jinhee soon to become inseparable friends. But they still have total different perspectives toward the future. Sookhee, who has watched many of the adopted children left, wish that she would find a good home before she becomes too old, so she tried her best to promote herself once she gets the chance. But Jinhee, who's still waiting for her father to fulfill his promise and come back to pick her up, but the wait seems to be increasingly long and increasingly remote.

Lecomte showed her great talent in this film she wrote and directed for the first time. She presented the very personal story in a very modest and earthy way, but it's even more effective and moving than letting the sentiments taking over. Take the part where Jinhee and Sookhee secretly took care of a dying bird after they found it as an example, it simply conveys the profound meaning of the fine line between life and death. Kin Sae Ron, who was casted as Jinhee, successfully performed as the crucial key to make the film work, whether it's the look when being helpless, or the fake smile when she has learned to be sophisticated, they are all hard to make the audience not be moved.

After Sookhee was gone, Jinhee, who had hope once again in her heart, had lost someone she could rely on. In the meantime, she learned that her father and the family had moved to somewhere no one knows from the headmaster of the monastery. It was the first time in her life that she felt all alone and was left in helplessness and despair. but she eventually learned to face the difficulties of life with strengths. She quickly got a new hope that might become a turning point in her life with her adorable looks. When on her way towards the unknown destination, the warmth when leaning on her father's back on the back seat of the bike suddenly appeared in her heart, but it may only be deeply buried in the memory as the song she sang from her heart.

Life can appear very strange, when no-one is there to explain it. Especially when you're a child and you have plenty of questions. This is a big question which started the day when a father, with no explanations left his daughter at an orphanage. A Brand New Life takes its spectator to childhood - to a time when we asked many things and perhaps got no answers and no explanations why things happen exactly this way. Film is through and through seen from the eyes of a child, but brought to it's richness with the help of a wonderful script and skillful camera, allowing its spectator to put aside for a while his adult point of view and just observe, and try to understand. This is the story of a little girl, Jinhee, played marvelously by Mademoiselle Sae Ron Kim. She poses questions, but there never comes an honest answer why her life has turned out like this.

A Brand New Life achieves a perfect harmony, one element underlines the other one. The long takes allow the spectator to grasp, how long the time in orphanage seemed for Jinhee, the relatively small amounts of dialogs depicts the introvert child, whose emotions break out through some furious actions. The gray tone palette which en-tours the setting of the orphanage shows very understandable the sadness of this place.

Film touches not only an auto-biographical story, but the sad truth of life – we all know that there are thousands of places like this around the world. And there are thousands of children who, perhaps, have mastered this tragicomic show for the visitors, the potential new families.

In conclusion I'd like to say that this is a very daring film, knowing that this was a true story and a true childhood, perhaps lived through second by second as we see it on the screen. I must say that it's a brave choice to put a story like this on the screen. But its greatest value is the absence of a pathos and absence of a depiction the children as a victims of the cruelty of life. A Brand New Life is hope and search for the answers through and through it.

In one review there is a comment to the effect of how sad it is that Koreans still dump unwanted children.

That person hasn't lived in a big enough world. Children worldwide, no matter which nation, suffer many types of abandonment and betrayal from those they consider to be their family, loved ones, carers.

And this is one type of story of such abandonment.

Sent to live in an orphanage with a view toward being adopted to a new family, most likely overseas into an entirely different culture, a little girl believes her father will always come back for her. But as so often happens and in some nations, yes, more than others, she is the unwanted child, the older child from another mother - and also a female, and father now has a new wife and a new baby - could I venture to guess, a boy?

The strikingly excellent acting from the young actress in the lead makes you believe you are seeing all those emotions and that searing pain of abandonment, from endless tears, disbelief, rage in reality, not just a movie.

She fights for herself, though. She doesn't give up although it appears she will. But from any child where the pain of abandonment and betrayal from those who you entrust to love and care for you, this film will resonate and possibly bring forward some real anxiety and memories that are unwanted. An excellent film very well done.

When I sat down here in 2022 to watch the 2009 South Korean drama "Yeo-haeng-ja" (aka "A Brand New Life"), then I had never heard about the movie before. So writer and director Ounie Lecomte had every opportunity to bedazzle and entertain me.

While I have no idea what life in an orphanage would be like in the 1970s South Korean, then I will say that writer and director Ounie Lecomte definitely managed to put together a rather emotional and beautiful movie here with "Yeo-haeng-ja".

But it was not only the writing and the storyline that made "Yeo-haeng-ja" a good movie. No, it was also very much because of some really amazing acting performances, especially by Kim Sae-Ron, Do Yeon Park and Ko Asung.

It should be noted that "Yeo-haeng-ja" is a slow paced movie, even for a drama. So it is a movie that might not find a base with just anyone in the audience, as it requires a particular mindset and mood to delve into the movie and enjoy it. There is just a sense of realism and sadness about the movie that permeates the entire movie, and it does creep in under the skin.

I will say, though, that I was adequately entertained by "Yeo-haeng-ja". However, it is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time around, as the storyline just doesn't have the contents to support a second viewing.

My rating of "Yeo-haeng-ja" lands on a six out of ten stars.