Jung Joo-ri, also known as July Jung, is one of the growing voices for minorities and equality in Korean cinema. Her feature debut, A Girl at My Door (2014), courageously looked into domestic violence. What makes this film unique is that it takes the viewpoint of a person who is in a position of authority and, at the same time, belongs to a marginalised group. This choice of character, through whose eyes the story of an abused teenage girl unfolds, complicates the simplistic dichotomies of victims and aggressors, and the persecuted and the oppressors, giving the concept of victimhood and survival fresh insight. Is this approach a reflection of the reality of violence and abuse targeted at women? The international film festival circuit seems to have valued the film’s ingenuity. It was officially invited to Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, while the Stockholm International Film Festival awarded it Best Directorial Debut. More than a decade has passed since its release. The question arises: does the depiction of domestic violence and its victims in A Girl at My Door still hold the ring of truth?
The main character of the film, Young-nam, played by Bae Doo-na, is an elite police officer in Seoul. Then, due to a scandal involving her sexuality, she is demoted to chief of a local police station in a small fishing village. In her modest accommodation, she drinks herself to sleep. The film does not pinpoint the reasons for her reliance on alcohol, but it is not just about the unfortunate event in her career. Young-nam’s lover, Eun-jung, probably the source of her scandal, visits her and urges her to stop drinking. Even before her enforced exile, she was not a happy person. Although there is no clear explanation of her psychological state or mental well-being, Bae Doo-na’s haunted look speaks volumes about the sadness, isolation, difficulties and loneliness that may have shaped her life in a society where heteronormativity is still a dominant mode of existence. Young-nam, in both her state of mind and physical circumstances, is burdened with the consequences of her minority sexuality, whose marginality is not even comparable to that of her male counterpart.
In her new post, Young-nam encounters Do-hee, a local teenage girl and stepdaughter of the man who literally runs the town by trafficking illegal migrant labourers. Do-hee is bullied by her classmates and abused by her father, both verbally and physically. His violence, particularly when he is drunk, leaves Do-hee bruised and blood-stained. Young-nam decides to take her in to separate her from her father during the school’s one-month summer holidays. Young-nam forms a special bond with Do-hee partly out of a motherly instinct to care for her. Yet their connection mostly rests on their common experience of being misunderstood, mistreated and left alone in their struggle to exist. However, when Do-hee’s stepfather reports Young-nam to the police for allegedly molesting his daughter, the special bond between the two unravels, and the hard reality that Young-nam fears, which has pushed her to the corner, rears its ugly face.
Turned Upside Down
After the report, Young-nam sits in the police station as a suspect in a child abuse case, arrested by her fellow officers. The detective interrogates Young-nam, persistently questioning her intentions behind sharing her home with Do-hee, who is in another interview room demonstrating with a doll which part of her body was touched by Young-nam. The honorific expected when the detective addresses Young-nam is dropped. She is treated as lower than a common criminal. Not only the credibility of the accusations but also her sexuality is under examination. This could be the nightmare she feared. The raw force of male authority, in which power comes from a hierarchy that puts the straight male at the top, pushes her to the edge of humanity by stripping away her social trappings and treating her sexuality as devious and potentially criminal. It is as if a completely different world, dormant underneath the mundane facade, wakes up and takes hold of Young-nam’s whole world. What Young-nam’s demotion to the fishing village implicitly and metaphorically connoted becomes explicit and literal through this incident. Young-nam maintains her calm manner although she is shaken by this upheaval of her life.
The film puts Young-nam at the crossroads of two viewpoints. One belongs to her as an elite police officer. She was climbing the ladder of success in the organisation, representing its ethos and principles when she commanded male subordinates to enforce the law. From this viewpoint, Do-hee’s father is a problematic figure: a child abuser and illegal human trafficker. The other, however, is derived from her being a sexual minority woman, whom the very system she is supposed to uphold openly discriminates against and despises. Judging from the expression on the interrogating detective’s face, “despise” is the least offensive term. The solution for Young-nam could be simple. She could denounce the system and be true to her whole self. Perhaps that is the only way in which she can maintain her sanity. The opposite would be to deny her sexuality and become a carrier of the system. But she does neither.
Instead, she continues to occupy the position where the system she works for keeps her at bay, to say the least, while remaining in close contact with her sexuality. As a result, while she can exercise authority over a case like that of Do-hee’s stepfather, the worst version of machismo, her sexuality remains a kind of open wound that is constantly subjected to critical examination by the system. At the end of the film, Young-nam drives to another post on a rainy night. Do-hee has fallen asleep in the seat next to her. This is neither a tragic ending nor a happy one. Young-nam’s life as a lesbian in Korea will continue. Although it will be a bumpy ride, Young-nam will also continue to confront the underside of a system dominated by raw male force.
Romantic Fantasy?
The end of the film does not provide clean-cut wrap-ups to the issues raised in the story. Young-nam and Do-hee leave for another post. When they arrive in a new town, then what should their relationship be like? Are they going to be mother and daughter? Friends? Companions? Probably Young-nam will take the role of foster parent for a child with an abused past. This is a solution that could be tolerated by a society in which their cohabitation is legally allowed. Even under such a legally sanctioned condition, however, will Young-nam be able to defend herself against suspicious minds about the undercurrents of their relationship? Can she draw a clean line from accusations that her ulterior motive with Do-hee is sexual in nature? At this point, it does not seem clear if Do-hee’s affection for Young-nam is purely a search for a mother or mother figure’s attention.
Young-nam taking Do-hee under her wing could be seen as a romantic fantasy. With her partner, Eun-jung, having left her and Korea, possibly for Australia, there is no great chance that she can have a family. Particularly in this harsh environment, where simply being a lesbian means becoming a potential child molester in the eyes of others, having a child would be an impossible dream, not to mention being in a stable relationship. In this sense, it is a fantasy for Young-nam to have a family. Then the harsh misfortune of Do-hee growing up in such a violent family, combined with Young-nam’s demotion, gave them an opportunity to form a strong relationship of mutual understanding. This emotional bonding can develop into a family-like union, which might be the only realistic alternative form of family for Young-nam.
The big question is still hanging in the air: what kind of family could they be? Could the emotional bond between them really be a basis for forming a family? Young-nam should play the role of mother and protector of Do-hee, whose pain and isolation she understands. Yet Young-nam is also a sexual minority whose social footing in terms of motherly care is not secure. The fact that she may not be an ideal mother in the traditional sense does not mean that she could not be a good mother. But there is a great challenge ahead: she must build her own way of being a mother and nurturing a child. Depending on where one sees it from, it is either a fantasy or a tough reality. Conventional marriage may still be regarded as the most secure form of family for a child. But having an understanding of each other looks like a good starting point for building a family, even if creating a happy one will be a tough challenge rather than a pure fantasy.