‘Concerning My Daughter’ Review: A Glowing Central Turn Illuminates a Tender Tale of Maternal Acceptance
variety.comJessica Kiang For us dazzled foreigners, it’s easy to forget that South Korea — land of superfast internet, glossy K-Pop, state-of-the-art foldable phones and “Squid Game” — is not in every respect the utopia of hypermodernity its recent global cultural boom might lead one to suspect.
The nation actually lags some way behind other developed democracies in terms of LGBTQ rights, a fact that drives Lee Mirang’s supple, sincere feature debut, “Concerning My Daughter,” which locates its conflict in the fraught relationship between a gay woman and her uncomprehending parent, but finds its heart in a subtle, radiant performance by Oh Minae as the anguished mother.
Oh’s unnamed character is a widow in her fifties (which puts her quite a bit younger than her counterpart in Kim Hye-jin’s source novel) who initially seems to be living a solitary existence, stumbling under the weight of a massive watermelon, up the hill to her empty home.
But later, as she dozes on the sofa, her daughter Green (Lim Semi) lets herself in and heads upstairs without so much as a sideways glance.
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