The end of the world doesn't look that different from the rest of the world. This is the first impression that four members of a school photo club “Shine” get once they reach a destination they proclaimed as the end of everything.
A Short Vacation is screening on Berlinale
Equipped with plastic analogue cameras given to them by a school professor who tasked them with taking pictures of what they believe is impossible to capture, four girls start their day trip completely unmotivated, clueless how to approach the topic. Ditching the project is more exciting, but being awarded demerits less so, which becomes their only motivation to continue with the homework.
Short moments before leaving the train in Shinchang – the final station of Seoul's subway line 1, their hope of experiencing something different already ebbed away. The landscape outside is “underwhelming” and “rural”, according to Song-hee , Si-yeon, So-jung and Yeon-woo, and they observe that Shinchang didn't even have a decency of cutting off its train tracks or roads to become THE destination. Reluctant to fulfil their task, they go a step further to make the trip worthwhile. Allegedly, there is a place where the rail tracks were cut off, just a bus ride away.
Exploring the area in search of the old railway station, they start paying attention to details – eggflowers in bloom, rice fields and vast abandoned spaces. The first snapshots will be of things they observe with curious eyes.
In his debut feature “Short Vacation”, Kwon Min-pyo sends four teenage girls on a road trip that leads them to another kind of journey, the one on the deeper emotional level. The middle school first-graders are in the confusing phase of life between childhood and adulthood , and their friendship seems to be stuck in a similar development phase. Both will change in the course of time, turning into a warm coming of age story.
There wasn't a concrete script for the film, just its outline, which is why the girls' conversations and their interaction comes across so effortless. It's the little things like the pun about the origins of photo club's name – “because of vice president's shiny head” that point out at typically teenage language. At the beginning, girls behave like kids their age, with noses stuck in cell phones, or eating out together and exchanging little gifts. Gradually, they start exchanging their memories, hopes and fears, discovering mutual points of interest outside their not so whole-heartedly chosen hobby.
Kwon Min-pyu didn't rename his young actresses. Their identities are kept, faithful to the original concept of letting them be themselves, just placed in a completely unknown setting.
The camera movement is fluid, pacing along with the gang of four, following their gaze or embracing them in closed spaces, while emersed in talks. The cinematographer Park jae-man keeps a respectful distance from the girls, putting them in a larger picture of interactivity with the space and each other.
“Short Vacation” has just had its world premiere in the Generation programme of Berlinale.
