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Film Review: Schoolgirl (2017) by No Hong-sik and Lee Young-jin

"Are you a cop too?"

According to a 2012 report released by the municipal government in Seoul, an estimated 200,000 youths run away from home each year. According to a study of the same year by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 3% of runaway youths have been exposed to prostitution, either as a buyer or a prostitute. There have been reported cases of runaway girls who sell sex over internet chat, and live with “families” in jjimjilbang, or bathhouses, with fellow runaway girls. According to Cho Jin-kyeong, director of Stand Up Against Sex-Trafficking of Minors, the latter phenomenon has become even worse with the surge of mobile phone chatting apps, as “Sex trafficking has now become ‘normalized' among young kids, no matter whether they are attending school or living with their families. The ages when the kids are first exposed to such crimes are getting younger as well.”. “” deals exactly with this phenomenon.

“Schoolgirl” is available from Echelon Studios

Ha-nee and Eun-byeol are the top students of their class, but their lives could not be any different. Ha-nee is the daughter of a judge and lives in luxury, but also under pressure to succeed and follow in her mother's footsteps. Eun-byeol, on the other hand, is quite poor, and loan sharks are on the heels of her mother. When they become violent and even threaten the young girl, she decides to ask for money from Ha-nee. She, however, proposes to her instead to enter an escort service she also attends, stating that it just involves sitting and having drinks with customers. Eun-byeol accepts but soon realizes that this is not the case at all. After a violent incident, the case and the teenage prostitution ring come into court, with Ha-nee's mother presiding. However, it turns out that justice is not exactly just. 

No Hong-sik and create a very dark world, where teenage girls suffer mostly due to the mistakes of their parents, and the lack of guidance in their life from both them and the school, whose role seem to have been restricted to just preparing them for the university entrance exams. In that fashion, both girl's fathers are nowhere to be found, while the mothers are completely ignorant to their lives and problems, either due to their overall perception regarding their future, in the case of Ha-nee, or because of their struggle due to financial issues, in the case of Eun-byeol. In such a setting, teenage girls, even as smart as the two protagonists, become easy prey to various individuals, occasionally with the support of a justice system that seems to be overprotective of the accused. Lastly, the bullying they suffer in school after their doings become known cements the thoroughness of these comments. 

Apart from context however, the atmosphere is also communicated through the production values. Lee Young-jin's grayish and desaturated images fit both the events and the psychological status of the protagonists, while the close ups during the violent scenes are occasionally shocking and the night shots rather artful. 

On the other hand, and beyond the overall atmosphere, there are a number of issues with the movie. The overall pace and the way the story unfolds is problematic, with the back and forth in the timeline end up being confusing instead of adding to the story, with the same applying to the abundance of characters and episodes. Furthermore, the script itself goes too far on occasion, as it moves into melodramatic terms, with the fact that the judge presiding the case is Ha-nee's mother being the most evident, and the hyperbolic depiction of the “villains” following close by. Lastly, the acting is a mixed bag also, with as Ha-nee being quite convincing on most occasions, but not as Eun-byeol, whose facial expressions in particular, seem unfit for the events unfolding in front of the screen a number of occasions, and despite the fact that her beauty makes her quite appealing to the eye. 

“Schoolgirl” has a number of issues regarding its narrative, and its low-budget, which had the two directors taking up a number of additional roles upon themselves (DP, editor, screenwriter, producer) did not help. On the other hand, and even within this messy narrative, the film definitely deserves a watch as it manages to touch on every aspect of this appalling phenomenon, with an approach where no punches are pulled, and that is where its true value lies. 

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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