MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

8 The Housemaid

     Mirovision

The 2010 adaptation of Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid featured a cast of some of South Korea’s biggest actors: Youn Yuh-jung, Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae, and Jeon Do-yeon. A woman (Jeon) is hired as an au-pair for a wealthy family, but as she engages in an affair with the husband, only chaos and destruction seem to follow wherever she goes. Director Im Sang-soo chose to honor the original film by keeping its storyline while updating it for contemporary viewers in order to reflect issues that are more prevalent today. Youn portrays an older woman who ropes Jeon’s character into the job.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

7 Right Now, Wrong Then

     Jeonwonsa Film

Hong Sang-soo is one of the most well-known directors to recently come out of Korean cinema, and he has continued to consistently put out quality movies every couple of years. His 2015 release was Right Now, Wrong Then, a film that tells its story and then rewinds to tell it again differently. Set in the historical city of Suwon, an arthouse director spots an attractive woman (Kim Min-hee) and the two begin a series of philosophical discussions. The movie is now considered a classic in contemporary Korean cinema.

6 Lucky Chan-sil

     Ge Production

Kang Mal-geum and Youn Yuh-jung star in Lucky Chan-sil, an existentialist film about the main character, Chan-sil (Kang Mal-geum), and how her life is spiralling. After losing her job as a film producer, Chan-sil seems aimless, first choosing to work as a cleaning woman for a famous actress. When she finally meets someone she is romantically interested in, Chan-sil finds herself dealing with dread and uncertainty about who she is and what her trajectory forward actually is.

5 The Bacchus Lady

     Korean Academy of Film Arts

An unfortunate issue in Korean society is the issue of elderly poverty, and The Bacchus Lady tackles the topic of women called Bacchus Ladies. These older women, to survive, are forced to sell their bodies to make an income. Youn stars as one of these women, and she has a difficult past that explains why she ended up in this situation. The Bacchus Lady truly is a cinematic character story, one where viewers can’t help but feel sympathy.

4 The Taste of Money

     Lotte Entertainment

The Taste of Money was Im Sang-soo’s follow-up to his 2010 movie The Housemaid, which also featured Youn, and riffed on similar themes. A conglomerate family, or chaebols, is one of the wealthiest families in the nation, but they have plenty of secrets. On the surface, they may seem well together and highly successful, but once the camera digs deeper into what is going on, it diverges into a story about sex, greed, and sin.

3 Pachinko

     Apple TV+

One of the most anticipated releases in early 2022 was Apple TV+’s Pachinko, which featured the likes of Youn Yuh-jung, Jin Ha, and Lee Min-ho. Pachinko is a multigenerational story about one family’s immigration to Japan, which was not easy for Koreans under Japanese colonization. A testament to survival and the will to succeed and live onwards, this powerful story’s captain was Youn. She portrayed the older version of the main character.

2 Woman on Fire

     Woo Jin Films Co.

Kim Ki-young’s Woman on Fire, released in 1971, is a remake of his film The Housemaid. This film set the stage for Youn’s popularity in South Korea, as the film was a hit in her native country. She portrays the femme fatale, a woman who enters a simple family’s life on a chicken farm. When she becomes pregnant with the father’s child, the entire family is put into difficult, deadly situations.

1 Minari

     Plan B Entertainment

Youn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari. The year is 1983, and a Korean immigrant family has just moved to Arkansas in search of the American Dream; they aim to grow Korean produce and sell it to vendors in other states. This task is not easy, however, and when the mother’s grandmother (Youn) arrives from Korea, generational and cultural barriers between grandchild and grandmother are exposed. But, at the same time, this is a story about overcoming such obstacles.