Kim Hye-Yoon Chose Her ‘Girl On A Bulldozer’ Role For The Challenge

The inspiration for director Park Ri-woong’s first feature film was a photo he saw in a game arcade. The photo of a woman on a motorcycle, with a baby on her back, inspired his screenplay for the film, Girl On A Bulldozer, starring Kim Hye-yoon. Her portrayal of his protagonist earned the actress the 2022 Screen International Rising Star Asia Award at the New York Asian Film Festival.

The film tells the story of Hye-young, a girl who acts tough and is occasionally violent, but whose rage obscures feelings of abandonment and betrayal. None of the adults in her life are reliable or honest. Park chose Kim as his star after seeing her previous work, which impressed him with both her talent and ability to work with direction.

“On the surface level, you might think Hye-young is just angry from start to finish, but I think she’s a person who responds honestly to the situations she is in, especially in reaction to the adults,” said Park. “I needed the other actors around her to act precisely to trigger a reaction from her. A lot of actors try and do what they’ve rehearsed, but I think it’s a real actor’s skill to be able to take direction, to combine natural abilities and energy, and to bring that in a way that works with direction.”

The role is unlike any of Kim’s previous characters. She appeared in the TV drama Extraordinary You, where she played a student who discovers she’s a character in a comic book. She also played a well-to-do student in the drama Sky Castle and a determined Joseon-era woman seeking a divorce in Secret Royal Inspector and Joy. These characters live very much on the surface, openly expressing their likes and dislikes, but Hye-young is a more complex and nuanced character, one who subverts and protects her true feelings. The delicately featured actress deftly personifies rage while playing the unhappy Hye-young. It was a difficult role, but that’s what made it attractive.

“Usually when I read a script I am able to picture myself in the script,” said Kim. “But for this film, even after reading the script I could not picture how I would even play the character. That really piqued my curiosity and my sense of wanting to challenge myself with this role. The previous characters I played, their expressions and actions are very much on the surface, but with this character, Hye-young, things fester and then suddenly come to the surface in a flash.”

Hye-young sports an arm-length dragon tattoo, which she usually covers with a white sleeve, not unlike an armistice flag. She removes the white sleeve when she’s ready to physically express her anger. Sometimes that rage is exercised in pursuit of the real villains who took advantage of her father. Sometimes it’s exercised against girls her age who may have done her wrong, but may not deserve the extent of her violence. Either way, Hye-young is on probation and such acts of violence could land her in jail.

Park originally envisioned the sleeve removal as a superhero transformation, wherein Hye-young declares war on the film’s villains. In the post production process, watching the scenes on screen, he realized that it came across as a childish type of behavior.

“Yes, she feels like she looks cool and she’s doing it to look cool,” said Park. “But ultimately I felt that the fact that she’s doing it at all is a testament to how immature she is. So, that kind of meaning grew on top of the original meaning I intended.”

Hye-young’s rage is a reaction to the negligent behavior of the adults in her life, but there’s tenderness at her core. Even if she can’t nurture herself, she tenderly cares for her younger brother. The scene where Hye-young hugs her younger brother was Kim’s favorite in the film.

“I think that’s really the part where her innermost self is revealed,” said Kim. “That’s a scene that is really dear to my heart.”

The hardest scenes to film were the ones in which the character drives a bulldozer. When Hye-young lands in court because of her repeated violence, a judge sentences her to a vocational course. She opts to learn to drive a bulldozer, a career the teacher says will never lead to a job, since she is a woman. The character easily masters the skill and uses it to her advantage, but filming the scenes in which Kim drives the bulldozer presented some challenges.

“There were scenes where the camera was right in front of me, so I couldn’t see,” said Kim. “It was actually right in front of me, so I was having to navigate with no visibility and on top of that having to drive a vehicle that I wasn’t familiar with. It was challenging.”

Park has seen the film multiple times during the post production process, so it’s hard for him to pick out a favorite scene. They are all special to him. But the one that still makes an impression after multiple viewings is the one where Hye-young finally gets some answers about her father.

“I think it’s really remarkable,” said Park. “Because everyone in this film is so rude to her and they neglect her, but when she hears the whole story of what happened to her dad and when she finally receives an offer of an apology, when no one has apologized to her, I think that is a scene that really hits me.”

Although the awards earned by his previous short films, Windowsill, Family and Let’s Go, underscore Park’s cinematic talent, he said that filming his first feature was not easy. To describe the experience he likes to quote the Coldplay song The Scientist.

“There’s a lyric in the song that says, ‘nobody said it was easy.’ But ‘no one ever said it would be so hard.’ I heard that directing was not an easy job, but no one told me it would be this hard.”

Still, he’s not discouraged. His next project is tentatively titled The Rower and he hopes to start filming this year. “It’s about a fisherman living in a seaside village who starts to help out with an insurance fraud scheme.”

Kim has not yet decided on her next project. At 26 she has been acting for 10 years and only recently had a chance to demonstrate her talent in larger roles. Her only criteria for choosing future roles is whether they are interesting and provide a challenge.

“Because I haven’t actually worked on a variety of roles or films I do feel like I really crave a challenge when it comes to picking roles,” said Kim. “If there is one standard for picking roles, it is what would be really interesting to see myself in, on screen, and I think those are the ones that I naturally gravitate towards.”

Her role in Girl On A Bulldozer is likely to result in more interesting offers. The film aired at the New York Asian Film Festival and is now available on Amazon Prime.