Next Sohee (2022)

AKA: Da-eum So-hee
Directed by: July Jung
Starring: Kim Si-eun (So-hee), Bae Doona (Yoo-jin), Sim Hee-seop (Jun-ho – 1st manager)
Country: South Korea; Effed Up Asian Cinema
Language: Korean; Effed Up Korean Movies
Runtime: 02:17:36

Plot – Spoilers:
Over 2 1/4 hrs long, this is from the maker of A Girl at My Door, and while it may not be as blatantly effed up as that one, it’s still a moving and riveting work on post-school, first-job blues in an extremely competitive culture.

Sohee is nearing graduation and feels privileged when she’s selected by her school for an externship program at a seemingly coveted call-center. The externship turns out to be an actual job with exploitative internship-type perks. Sohee enters the carefully crafted cycle of shitty jobs, shitty lives, an excess of shitty options to spend the money you earn after the surreptitious sly cuts, and the viciousness of it all – the grand trap.

The suicide of her manager, a married man who most of the time seemed to care for the employees, the subsequent coldness and coverup by the company, and her own eventual acceptance of the bribe offered to stay quiet. It’s a slow disintegration for Sohee, who increasingly feels cheated, lied to and let down by everyone – whether it’s her friends, parents, job, company, teachers or school. She also struggles with not being able to pursue her one true love, dancing, to the levels she once used to.

Bae Doona from A Girl at My Door takes over the 2nd half, here too as a cop at odds with the police system.

Genres: Teenager, Depression, SelfHarm-Suicide, Detective-Cops