Han Gong-Ju - when your past is this traumatic, you can never escape

This devastating and moving Korean film was one of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time, but always compelling.  Right from the opening scene, when we hear the central character Gong-Ju talk detachedly how she copes with something horrific that has happened to her and see her exiled to a new school through to the traumatic, ambiguous ending, there is an unrelenting feeling of marginalisation and despair, with only a few moments of escape in between.  This is not to say I didn't appreciate is as a powerful piece of film-making, and I think it may have been a little less disturbing that I remember, but it was also very hard-going in its unflinching portrayal of a rape survivor being abandoned by everyone around her.

One of the things the film does well, and which helps clamp the viewer to the story emotionally is to full focus its gaze on Gong-Ju.  It brings you into her isolated state, partly through its occasional flashbacks as if the viewer themselves is blinking at the memory.  This only intensifies as the horrific ordeal that she went through is revealed. Music is the only solace for Gong-Ju and it is well-used throughout – both to reflect her state of mind and as a potential route to redemption (although it will become yet another part of her life that betrays her).

I don’t know how accurate the film is as to how survivors of rape are treated in Korea and whether these precise set of circumstances could happen, although frighteningly, this is inspired by a real case.  However, even if metaphorical, it is all too believable in creating an atmosphere and sense of the victim being the one abandoned, doubted or blamed, seen as a messy inconvenience, and of the power structures that lead to the act in the first place. Perhaps it takes the depiction of such an extreme coming together of shocking and horrific events to demonstrate how the world’s indifference or worse must feel for people in that situation.  There are so many studies that have showed how we as people have preconceived notions of how a victim should behave. Maybe it should not be such a surprise when one character intimates hat if Gong-Ju really was innocent in all this, why has she gone on living?  But it still hits like a body blow to the viewer – another episode of the horrifying lack of compassion displayed by characters throughout the film, even from the ones you think will finally be a source of support.  Interestingly, it may only be the teacher who seems most open about having his own interests at heart who actually tires to act in Gong-Ju’s interest as well throughout – finding her somewhere safe to stay at his mother’s house and recognising the potential danger of Gong-Ju being in touch with her alcoholic father.

As mentioned the film ends with a singularly devastating but ambiguous event as we finally learn the full reason why Gong-Ju has put so much of her focus into learning to swim. In some ways, you could see some hope or light at the end of the tunnel in the ambiguity, but with all that had gone before, it felt like a punch to the gut.