‘Waterdrop’: Busan Review

Dir/scr: Choi Jongyong. South Korea. 2024. 107mins

Thirteen-year-old Suyeon (Kim Bomin) is all alone in the world following the death of her grandmother. For now, the authorities permit her to stay in the Seoul apartment they shared, but the social worker warns her that she needs a new legal guardian or she is likely to be placed in a childcare facility. So Suyeon sets her sights on a new home by befriending a recently adopted seven-year-old, Seonyul (Choi Leerang), and inveigling herself into the family. Western audiences may find themselves distracted by the question of whether South Korea has a mind-bogglingly lax child protection infrastructure or whether the film is disengaged from real-world practicalities. More fundamental issues are the picture’s disjointed plotting and the puzzling inconsistencies that undermine the noteworthy performances of the young cast.

Puzzling inconsistencies

Waterdrop, which won the Korean Film Council′s Korean Film Screenplay Competition at script stage, is the first feature from Choi Jongyong, who previously directed short film The Lady With The Dog (2019). The film’s teasing, enigmatic qualities could at a stretch generate further interest on the festival circuit, but outside of the domestic market the picture may struggle to assert itself.

What’s not in question here is the quality of Choi’s work with his young cast. Kim’s Suyeon is a fascinating, mercurial conundrum of a child. She’s vulnerable and wounded in her grief over the loss of the grandmother who raised her, but there are flashes of knife-blade ruthlessness. When the daughter of a neighbour rebuffs her in her time of need after her grandmother’s funeral, Suyeon knows exactly what to say to get the upper hand in the situation. “Does your mother know you were bullied?” she says sweetly. There’s an implication that she might have been the one doing the bullying.

She first becomes aware of Seonyul and the little girl’s new adoptive parents, Han Yuri (Kim Hyujeong) and Lee Taeho (Jin Daeyeon), when she stumbles onto their perky, upbeat adoption vlog. Han Yuri speaks of her hope to adopt another child to complete the family, and Suyeon spots an opportunity. She tracks down the child’s kindergarten and follows Seonyul as she walks home. And this is where Choi hints that things might be amiss. Seonyul doesn’t go home, but instead heads to an alleyway where she has hidden a jar filled with insects. She claims to be caring for them, and nursing them back to health. But it’s clear that Seonyul’s brand of love is the kind that does more harm than good – perhaps symbolic of the strained family dynamics that underpin the superficially perfect domestic unit that Suyeon hopes to join. 

But once Suyeon has introduced herself to Han Yuri, the story immediately loses credibility. It seems far-fetched that any parent would react to the news that a teenager had befriended their developmentally disabled pre-primary school child by casually inviting the older kid into their home. And even more unlikely that she would then fall asleep while the adolescent stranger rustled up a multi-course meal in the kitchen. And the film drops a further question mark into the story with the sudden, inexplicable disappearance of several key characters.

Individual scenes work effectively – there’s a sequence on a crowded bus in which the two girls, travelling without adult supervision, are jostled apart, capturing the vulnerability of both and the indifference of much of society to their plight. But the film fails to pull its isolated moments of insight together into a coherent whole.