Rising star Minha Kim unveils her first lead efficiency since breaking out in AppleTV+’s status drama sequence Pachinko, taking part in a younger lady accused of murdering a best-selling writer in Chun Solar-young’s characteristic debut A Girl with Closed Eyes. Premiering on the Busan Worldwide Movie Competition, the yarn unspools as a elegant crime thriller bolstered by a raft of sturdy performances, not least from Kim and Choi Hee-seo, however finally let down by some wildly implausible plotting.
Set in South Korea’s provincial mountain area of Hongcheon, A Lady with Closed Eyes opens as a younger lady calling herself Min-ju (Kim) is caught, smoking gun actually in hand, standing over the bloodied corpse of celebrated author Jeong Sang-woo (Lee Ki-woo). Taken in for questioning, she claims that Jeong was chargeable for an unsolved kidnapping case from 20 years earlier that serves because the inspiration for his hit novel. She additionally reveals that she is definitely Lee In-seon, the younger woman on the middle of the kidnapping, however will solely clarify additional to her former classmate Park Min-ju (Choi), a detective within the Seoul police division who just lately made headlines for blowing the whistle on her superiors.
Park reluctantly returns dwelling for a sit-down together with her estranged pal, and earlier than lengthy a cavalcade of secrets and techniques, each previous and current, is muddying the waters of their relationship and throwing every little thing regarding this obvious open-and-shut case out the window. Additional including to the confusion, Jeong’s writer is spearheading rising public unrest demanding swift justice for the lifeless celeb, and Lee’s speedy conviction for his homicide.
A Lady with Closed Eyes wears its quite a few cinematic influences proudly on its sleeve, virtually as a badge of honor. Bong Joon-ho’s Recollections of Homicide is an apparent touchstone for its central premise of the subtle city cop contending with the extra backward strategy of small-town regulation enforcement. Jung Byung-gil’s Confession of Homicide, wherein a serial killer publishes a e book primarily based on his personal crimes, casts a equally lengthy shadow over Chun’s work. Stephen King’s Distress and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Backyard are additionally enthusiastically name-checked.
Hollywood movies starting from The Silence of the Lambs to The Traditional Suspects gamely inform the quite a few interrogation sequences between the central protagonists, whereas Chun confidently ratchets up the strain by conserving a lot of seemingly believable outcomes vying for competition.
Within the second half, nonetheless, the thriller quickly begins to unravel, as a sequence of spurious pink herrings is launched, and twist compounds upon twist, undoing a lot of the promising work laid out throughout the movie’s first hour; thus sending it plummeting right into a nosedive of logical incoherence from which it by no means recovers.
Whereas the movie’s decision is subsequently considerably unsatisfying, A Lady with Closed Eyes is definitely not devoid of advantage. Chun directs with an assured hand, staging a sequence of slickly crafted set-pieces and stare-downs that may serve stronger materials admirably. Equally, performances are uniformly wonderful.
In Pachinko, Kim performed a resilient, wise-beyond-her-years heroine who’s persistently overwhelmed down by an aggressively patriarchal society — in a task she shares with Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung. As In-seon, Kim delivers a multi-faceted flip that shifts effortlessly between nefarious villain and sympathetic sufferer. Choi, whose resumé already contains memorable turns in Okja, Our Physique and Ship us from Evil, greater than earns her stripes because the movie’s de-facto motion hero who proves equal components Clarice Starling and Frank Serpico in her seek for the reality.
Title: A Lady with Closed Eyes
Competition: Busan (Korean Cinema At present)
Director-Screenwriter: Chun Solar-young
Forged: Minha Kim, Choi Moon Hee-seo, Lee Ki-woo
Gross sales agent: Finecut
Working time: 1hr 45mins
