Film, like all art forms, has to offer us something personally. That also means that there will be lot of film that just never click. I would ask those who were bored, however, that they consider what the director was trying to do. Here we have a young woman who has fallen into a sort of despair. She works at a call answering service for a credit card company. We get to see how this could be really unpleasant. People often call because their own incompetence led them there. Some are angry because they needed their cards to work but they don't. And some treat these operators as if they were like minded friends. One guy has supposedly built a time machine and he doesn't want to carry cash into the past. He is a frequent caller and always gets the same response. What has happened to this young woman as that her life has become so consistently withdrawn, that she has lost all the joy. A man dies next door to her, and it turns out she never really knew him. She retreats to her apartment and shuts out the outside. Her father has become a widower and she can't handle his loneliness and rejects him out of hand. Eventually, she gets an epiphany from a young woman whose incompetence invites her cruelty. But there is much more to the story. I rather enjoyed this.
Plot summary
Jina is the top employee at a credit card company call center. She avoids building close relationships, choosing instead to live and work alone – until she is suddenly tasked with training a new recruit.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
July 11, 2022 at 12:27 PM
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Movie Reviews
What Do We Need From It?
A Reflection on Capitalism and the Working Class
I am really surprised - though honestly not shocked - that more people don't note that the glaring truth of this film is that it's about the invasion of Western capitalism in South Korea. The more SK has Westernized, the more its people have the same problems as anyone stuck in a capitalist grind.
The main character is basically a robot who takes abuse constantly in her job as a customer service agent who answers phones for a credit card company. She handles every call with rational detachment and feigned politeness, obeying the commands of rude and irrational customers who don't see her as a person.
Jina's plight is further complicated by her bottled up grief over the death of her mother. It takes the death of a neighbor, who appears to her as a ghost, and a young, needy trainee at work to reach into Jina's solitary world of work and television.
solitude
A young girl works at a call-in centre for a credit card company. Aside from greeting customers and looking at her cellphone constantly, she hasn't much of a social life. She is a misanthrope, avoiding any human interaction. When she is forced to have a trainee she is rude and abrupt to her.
All this is well done by the main actress (Jeong Da-eun) and she certainly can't be accused of over-acting. The film is also sprinkled with humour, which alleviates the atmosphere and prevents the film from being overly world-weary.
Obviously the purpose is to demonstrate the alienation and loneliness of young people in today's' world - yet hasn't this been a perennial problem - listen to some of the folk music from the 1960s.