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Soulmate (소울메이트), dir. Min Yong-keun, South Korea 2020, 124 min., 12
Summoned to a gallery to see a giant hyperrealist sketch of herself, single mother Mi-so (Kim Da-mi) denies all knowledge of where Ha-eun (Jeon So-nee), the mysterious woman responsible for the photo-like drawing, might be – and a series of flashbacks show the shifting relationship, over 14 years, between subject and artist, who first met as 11-year-olds on Jeju Island.
This is a portrait of fleeting youth and of an absent artist. Director Min Yong-keun gradually brings in the melodrama, although like the portraitist at the film’s centre, he also knows how to trick and manipulate the viewer, concealing as much as he reveals in the shadows of an otherwise sunny picture. The director can only claim partial authorship here of what is actually a remake of Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang’s Soul Mate (2016) – but nonetheless he and writer Kang Hyun-joo put their own stamp on the work.
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