Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013)

Directed by: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea

Review: Since 2008 that Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo faithfully makes at least one film per year. “Nobody’s Daughter Hae-Won” complies with the simplistic approach that characterizes its director, but the result, despite effective in many ways, didn’t show the spell of “The Day He Arrives”, or the charm of “In The Country”. Haewon (Jeong Eun-Chae) is a film student who feels lonely due to the following reasons: her distant mother is heading to Canada and came to say goodbye; she was having a case with a married professor who moved away due to his child born; almost all her colleagues from school think that she’s rich and arrogant. Even with her life upside down, Haewon shows to be a very strong person without being afraid of taking risks and make her own decisions. Once more, she starts to meet up with the professor whose jealousy, immaturity, and undecided personality, caused their relationship to be broken again. But Haewon’s adventure doesn’t stop here and a marriage proposal arrives from another much older professor who was teaching in US, becoming a possibility of escape and affirmation. Like in Sang-soon’s previous works, this is a film about encounters, which along its way constantly switches between intense and lenient. The performances are one of its strong features, and counted with the guest appearance of Jane Birkin.