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Little Forest
Feb. 3rd, 2020 05:33 pmI've longed to see Soon-rye Yim's Little Forest ever since I started seeing gifsets for it - those are all links to a selection of said gifsets, which I am happy to say accurately capture the glories of the film. Food! Sunshine! Beautiful countryside! Friendship! Also gardening, which I don't think is featured in any of these gifsets, but nonetheless provides an important link between food scenes.
It's the food scenes, however, which are definitely the most prominent part of the films (just look how many! And that's actually only a small selection of them). I'm not very familiar with Korean food, but by the end of the movie - actually, by about ten minutes into the movie - I wanted to hop on a plane to Korea and eat everything in sight.
Except maybe the soup Eun-sook makes with ALL THE PEPPERS ("I'll eat spicy food and die!" Eun-sook declares), because that would probably be too much for my stomach. But everything else! It all looks so delicious! And the countryside is so beautiful, and the gardening scenes are beautiful too, but also grounding (in a very literal sense), showing all the work that lies behind these gorgeous meals, although we also see the work and care and skill that goes into cooking them, too. It's just a celebration of the beauty and skill that goes into creating everyday life and I loved it.
I also just loved the friendships in the movie, particularly the friendship between Hye-won (our heroine, who has returned to her hometown after failing her teacher's exam in Seoul) and Eun-sook, because they're in many ways very different and they're also - not quite competing for the affection of their friend Jae-ha - and yet this competition, although it is a tension, never overpowers their friendship. And it was actually really nice to see a movie that can allow the female leads to compete while still really caring about each other! And to sometimes have problems that aren't about the boy, and to overcome those too and continue being friends!
And also Eun-sook is just great in general. I loved all the characters, but Eun-sook may have been my favorite for her sheer bluntness, although I could absolutely see why Hye-won isn't always thrilled about it, too, that's definitely a characteristic that is often more fun to observe than actually experience.
And Hye-won's relationship with her mother! And the way that the movie begins in winter, and moves through all four seasons, and then we end in the next spring, so we get to see the countryside in all its moods and follow the progress of the garden and see the different seasonal foods, and end on a note of rebirth.
***
The presenter before the movie told us that the movie is actually based on a Japanese manga (and that there's a Japanese movie or possibly miniseries based on the manga, too; it's four hours long, so it could go either way), and as I was watching this Korean adaptation it struck me how universally adaptable this could be, for any country with beautiful countryside and delicious food heritage. And isn't that most countries, really? Don't we deserve a dozen different adaptations, set all around the globe, featuring young women finding themselves in bucolic settings by cooking lots of delicious food and chowing down with their friends?
It's the food scenes, however, which are definitely the most prominent part of the films (just look how many! And that's actually only a small selection of them). I'm not very familiar with Korean food, but by the end of the movie - actually, by about ten minutes into the movie - I wanted to hop on a plane to Korea and eat everything in sight.
Except maybe the soup Eun-sook makes with ALL THE PEPPERS ("I'll eat spicy food and die!" Eun-sook declares), because that would probably be too much for my stomach. But everything else! It all looks so delicious! And the countryside is so beautiful, and the gardening scenes are beautiful too, but also grounding (in a very literal sense), showing all the work that lies behind these gorgeous meals, although we also see the work and care and skill that goes into cooking them, too. It's just a celebration of the beauty and skill that goes into creating everyday life and I loved it.
I also just loved the friendships in the movie, particularly the friendship between Hye-won (our heroine, who has returned to her hometown after failing her teacher's exam in Seoul) and Eun-sook, because they're in many ways very different and they're also - not quite competing for the affection of their friend Jae-ha - and yet this competition, although it is a tension, never overpowers their friendship. And it was actually really nice to see a movie that can allow the female leads to compete while still really caring about each other! And to sometimes have problems that aren't about the boy, and to overcome those too and continue being friends!
And also Eun-sook is just great in general. I loved all the characters, but Eun-sook may have been my favorite for her sheer bluntness, although I could absolutely see why Hye-won isn't always thrilled about it, too, that's definitely a characteristic that is often more fun to observe than actually experience.
And Hye-won's relationship with her mother! And the way that the movie begins in winter, and moves through all four seasons, and then we end in the next spring, so we get to see the countryside in all its moods and follow the progress of the garden and see the different seasonal foods, and end on a note of rebirth.
***
The presenter before the movie told us that the movie is actually based on a Japanese manga (and that there's a Japanese movie or possibly miniseries based on the manga, too; it's four hours long, so it could go either way), and as I was watching this Korean adaptation it struck me how universally adaptable this could be, for any country with beautiful countryside and delicious food heritage. And isn't that most countries, really? Don't we deserve a dozen different adaptations, set all around the globe, featuring young women finding themselves in bucolic settings by cooking lots of delicious food and chowing down with their friends?
