A Girl At My Door (AKA Dohee-ya) Review

12th January 2016

By Last Caress.

A Girl at My Door, the debut picture from writer/director July Jung, is nominally a familiar and oft-told tale (kid needs to escape abusive domestic situation) attached to an equally familiar premise (cop winds up in sleepy suburb having fallen from grace in The Big City, seeks redemption).

Young-nam (Doona Bae) is a South Korean police Captain, freshly arrived at her new station amongst a small, close-knit fishing community on the southern shores of Yeosu and in total contrast to her previous post in Seoul. She didn’t apply to be stationed out in the sticks; in the wake of an internal investigation (about what exactly, we are not informed, although clues to what might have happened present themselves along the way); Young-nam has found herself removed to this place. She is introduced to bragadocious local kingpin Yong-ha (Sae-byeok Song). He’s ignorant and misogynistic from the off and, as it transpires, he’s also an alcoholic like his cantankerous mother Jum-soon (Jin-gu Kim), but the locals and indeed the constabulary pay little more than lipservice to his transgressions because of his family lobster fishing company, upon which the town depends.

Later, Young-nam happens upon a gaggle of adolescents bullying a girl (Sae-ron Kim) who reveals herself as Do-hee, stepdaughter to Yong-ha. She’s reticent and uncommunicative but she soon opens up to Young-nam; her stepfather is prone to frequent outbursts of violent drunken abuse, aimed at Do-hee ever since her mother fled the relationship.

This allegation places Young-nam in a quandary. She wants to exercise her authority as a police officer to throw the book at Yong-ha – there’s certainly plenty of substantiating evidence of abuse all over Do-hee’s battered body – but she also has to be mindful of his standing amongst the locals and of her own unfamiliarity to them, as well as her need to present a low profile to her superiors for the sake of her precarious ongoing career prospects. Still, Do-hee asks Young-nam if she can stay with her, at least over the school holiday period whilst her stepfather gets his head straight following a recent family tragedy and, whilst initially reluctant, Young-nam eventually sees this as the compromise that might just keep Do-hee safe whilst maintaining the status quo. But Young-nam has private issues of her own too which could destroy her entire life as well as put her traumatised young ward in further jeopardy…

Do-hee, portrayed superbly by youngster Sae-ron Kim, is a study in the consequences of systematic familial abuse. But it’s really as much about the things which aren’t being said as about the things which are. The fantastic Doona Bae, back for her first Korean feature since her Hollywood turn in Cloud Atlas (Wachowskis, 2012), presents Young-nam frequently and silently exercising incredible emotional restraint, and she has to do so because of the issues with which her character Young-nam is struggling, one of which is an important character twist revealed mid-movie but another of which is her own deepening alcoholism, which she disguises by way of pouring all of her booze into mineral water bottles. It’s also about the nature of societal tolerance and intolerance in Korea, given both the reprehensible behaviour the townsfolk are prepared to ignore for their own material benefit and the character traits in Young-nam which appear to inspire a collective and barely-disguised seething contempt.

A Girl at My Door is shot and cut with an assured and confident hand which belies writer/director July Jung’s relative inexperience, photographed in deliberate and measured fashion typical of quality Asian cinema and demonstrating as much restraint behind the camera as Doona Bae demonstrates in front of it. And despite the slow pace of the picture, the heavy nature of its subject matter and its ever more disquieting tone, A Girl at My Door never feels ponderous. It’s not a hap-hap-happy family feelgood movie but it’s a good ‘un for sure, and comes highly recommended.

A Girl at My Door is out on DVD.

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