The concept of families for hire has been explored in Japanese cinema in particular, where the whole concept of renting families has been functioning in the country since the 1990s. The latest years, however, it seems that the phenomenon also appears in Korea, and expectedly, also found its way to local cinema.
“Making Memory” is screening at Busan International Short Film Festival
In the near future, a device that can portray people's memories on screens has become a norm, with the initial scene of the movie showing a teacher using it in a classroom, where the students had the task of presenting one memory with their family. The presentation of the first girl leaves everyone with a smile on their face, but when the same woman features in the memory of the next student, everyone realizes that something is wrong. It turns up that Eun-ha, the woman in the two “movies” is actually an actress-for-hire, and one of the most popular among children for that matter. Her popularity, however, has her neglecting her son, with the rest of the movie focusing on these two axes, her job and the issues with her son, Jae-sung.
Park Seung-beom directs a short that makes a number of comments, with the sadness of the whole concept of rented families being the epicenter. The reasons why people, and particularly children in this case, would spend their money on something like this is actually presented in the finale, which shows that the reason for such endeavors is how parents neglect their children, with the way the two family issues are connected being the best aspect of the narrative here. The concept of the children presenting their family memories in classroom could be perceived as a metaphor for the way social media work today, with the dreamy, music-video like memories being beautiful, but essentially empty, considering that parents, and not real actors appear in them. Lastly, a comment on how memories are created and what impact being able to change them “manually” could have is also touched upon, although epidermically.
In that fashion, Park Yeong-ju and Son Jae-hyeok's cinematography emerges as one of the best aspects here, both in the aforementioned videos, and in the “peaking” scenes, which show Eun-ha's gaze towards her son. Kim Ji-won's editing induces the movie with a relatively fast pace that suits the overall aesthetics here, although the sequence with the flashback scenes in succession does emerge as a cliche, and is essentially an unnecessary spoon-feeding to the audience, particularly since the short lasts just for 17 minutes.
Jina Heo as Eun-ha is quite convincing in the role of both mother and mother for hire, anchoring the movie with her performance.
Despite the aforementioned issue, “Making Memory” emerges as a well-shot and rather interesting short, particularly due to its main theme.
