Director Chun Sun-Young Gives Her Film’s Victim A Voice

Mystery thrillers tend to ask a lot of questions. When did the victim die? How? And who did it? Sometimes they ask more complicated questions, the kind not satisfied by a coroner’s report or DNA results. Answers only the victim can give. When police find Kim Min-ju pointing a gun at a body they figure they no longer need to ask questions. She’s obviously the killer. Yet Min-ju, played by Kim Min-ha, is also a victim. In the Korean film Girl With Closed Eyes she gets to tell her side of the story.

“On the surface level it is targeted as a mystery, thriller as a genre,” said Director Chun Sun-young. “But I think one of the things that my strengths lie in is that I’m able to focus on that emotional connection that you can establish with certain characters. I also tend to have a focus on human relationships, and that is how the character was created.”

Chun dislikes the way many thrillers carelessly and quickly dispense of the victim to focus on the crime.

“I was always a little miffed that when you see thrillers usually the victim dies and just straight up disappears,” she said. “I wanted to really make a film where the victim becomes the protagonist and is able to have agency in the sense where she is able to save another victim and actually do something about the wrongs that have been inflicted upon her. For me, this was sort of scratching that itch and coming from my imagination of what a victim would do if they survived an incident and how would they act if another incident were to happen?”

Kim Min-ju was kidnapped as a child and tormented for years by the public’s fascination with her true crime story. The villains in Girl With Closed Eyes include the media. The ongoing crime reportage makes life miserable for Min-ju and turn friends and neighbors against her.

“There are several antagonists in this film,” said Chun. “Several antagonists who represent the media. For example, there are reporters, there’s also the head of the publishing company who is an antagonist in her own way. Then of course, there’s new media like YouTube and whatnot. I definitely intended to make a statement that these outlets are also victimizing someone and traumatizing someone again and again through what they do.”

When Kim Min-ju is arrested, she insists that Park Min-ju, played by Choi Hee-so, is the only police officer she’ll talk to. They share some history.

“As a genre film, I did feel that following the mystery, trying to figure that out, was an important part, because that is what viewers will expect,” said Chun. “I do remember focusing very much on following those genre rules in a sense. But later on, once we hit the climax, it’s revealed that what’s actually important is the relationship between Min-ju and Min-ju.”

Girl With Closed Eyes creates empathy by telling the story from the victim’s perspective, which is also a female perspective.

“It just came about naturally for me because I am a woman and I just question certain things differently,” said Chun. “For example, why does a victim just disappear? Why can’t a victim become the protagonist of the film? That comes from just being a woman in the world. I’m sure countless other women are dealing with certain societal issues that affect women, and there are certain hurts and scars that we bear because we are women. This kind of thinking is a natural progression and extension of that experience, and hopefully that can also expand the horizons of what cinema can mean today.”

The number of female directors in Korea has grown over the last decade, with more female-led films finding commercial success. Girl With Closed Eyes is Chun’s first feature length film, although her 2002 short film Good Night was nominated for a Best Short Film at the BAFTA awards.

“There are many more women directors in the younger generation that are in the field, and I really feel like that’s a positive change,” she said. “A point of concern for me is that even though we have more women directors and women writing scripts and directing the stories we write about, a story with a female protagonist is still considered pretty rare in the Korean film industry. I have these two actresses essentially helming this film. I was focused on being faithful to the genre of this being a thriller, but also focusing on the relationship between these two women. The fact that I focused on this female relationship is still pretty rare.”

Seeing Kim Min-ha act in Pachinko prompted Chun to cast her in this film. She then cast Choi (Okja, Now We Are Breaking Up) as her childhood friend Min-ju. She cast Lee Ki-woo as popular novelist Jeong Seong-woo. It’s a surprising role for the actor who previously appeared in the dramas Agency and My Liberation Notes and generally has a “nice guy” image.

“He has a very kind image and not only does he have a kind image, he is in actuality a very kind and handsome actor,” said Chun. “The truth is that not a lot of actors wanted to touch this role because it not only deals with murder, but it deals with child abuse. Molestation. We’re dealing with a very grave crime here. Also it wasn’t a huge role in itself, so not a lot of people were open to doing this.”

She wanted a likable actor.

“If that person was capable of committing such atrocious crimes, I thought it would be interesting to really twist and subvert that image.”

Chun is working on two new projects. One is a horror thriller with a female protagonist and the second is a drama set during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910 to 1945) and it’s focused on the stock market.

“This script deals with the first stock market in Korea,” said Chun. “I thought it would be interesting to incorporate an economic perspective into the storytelling as well as a historic perspective.”

Girl With Closed Eyes is currently being shown at film festivals.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.