’Where Would You Like To Go?’: Jeonju Review

Dir/scr: Kim Hee-jung. South Korea, Poland. 2023. 104mins

The latest feature from director Kim Hee-jung (Grape Candy (2012), A French Woman (2019), etc) sensitively explores the aftermath of loss. A modest but affecting tale of grief and the burdens of survival ultimately blossoms into a touching humanist drama. Further festival attention should accrue following its world premiere as the closing gala of the Jeonju Film Festival. 

Kim is very effective at conveying the way time stands still, drifts away or becomes meaningless in the face of a loved one’s death

Adapted from the short story of the same name by Kim Ae-ran, Where Would You Like To Go? traces the aftershocks of tragedy. A schoolteacher risks his life to save a drowning pupil but both of them perish. Kim’s initially brusque, understated approach means that we never see the incident. Instead, the focus is on the survivors, and how they navigate the limbo of grief. 

The teacher’s widow Myeong-ji (Park Ha-seon) quietly closes her bookstore in Gwangju, South Korea and accepts an offer to stay in her cousin’s flat in Warsaw. (Kim once studied at the Polish Film School in Lodz). The dead pupil’s 17-year-old sister Ji-eun (Jeong Min-ju), collapses and is hospitalised with a strange form of paralysis that affects her right side. Myeong-ji starts to notice a form of psoriasis spreading across her body. Grief has its physical manifestations.

Kim is very effective at conveying the way time stands still, drifts away or becomes meaningless in the face of a loved one’s death. Days can pass in an instant while a moment of reflection seems to last an eternity. Myeong-ji even has conversations with Siri in an attempt to understand how she feels about being left behind. The desire to shut out the world, sit alone in darkened rooms or lie in hushed hospital wards lends a suitably sombre, lugubrious feel to the first half of the film. 

In Warsaw, Myeong-ji is faced with constant reminders of death and sacrifice, from a visit to the Holy Cross Church containing Chopin’s heart to the national commemoration for those who fell in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. She meets Hyeon-seok (Kim Name-hee), an old college friend of her husband. A specific decision on her part feels like an awkward plot contrivance, but is ultimately justified by what transpires from it. The couple’s conversations offer a form of solace and help her explore the ’what ifs’ and missed opportunities of the past

Ji-eun, meanwhile, finds a champion in schoolboy Park Hae-su (Moon Woo-jin), the best friend of her late brother. His earnest devotion to her and determination to do right by his friend is a sustaining thread throughout her slow recovery and ability to face the future. 

Kim shows an elegant touch when it comes to placing key flashbacks within the narrative. Little shards of fond remembrance confirm the loving bond between husband and wife and the affectionate friendship between the two schoolboys. Cumulatively, they move the film beyond the mournful to a more life-affirming place, echoing the way in which the survivors start to gain some perspective on their initial sorrows.

Park Ha-seon’s performance carefully captures the subdued, numbed state of Myeong-ji whilst teenager Moon Woo-jin is a standout in a solid cast, conveying the endearing guilelessness and good heart of a teenager who carries his emotions close to the skin. 

There are a couple of references to the films of Kieslowski in Where Would You Like To Go? It is a high benchmark to set and, whie Kim’s film doesn’t reach those levels of profundity, it grows into a moving reflection on love, loss, the comfort of memory and those individuals who become lifelines in a time of despair