A Brand New Life

"..Life in the orphanage, seen through the eyes of a child.."

A Brand New Life Story of a little girl, in a sudden, abandoned by her father in the orphanage.. Living her life in the orphanage and venturing herself to a great unknown, a new family, hence A Brand New Life..

The film is based on the experiences of the director, an ethnic Korean who was adopted by a French couple in the 1970s..

A beautifully made movie.. An 8 of 10 stars from me..

...yet I was left wanting for more. I didn't get to know much about Jinhee, why she was there, what happened to her family, and the like. Yet in real life, as this movie was based on, we often don't get the answers we seek or that would make sense of our situation. One reviewer said it wasn't a tearjerker but a heart tugger, and I tend to agree. The roles were beautifully played the child cast and a few cameos were nice by two of Korea's leading male actors who played Jinhee's father and a sympathetic doctor.

The sad thing is, Koreans still dump unwanted children into orphanages to this day, a lot of whom are the product of out-of-wedlock relationships. It's horrible to have the children suffer for the mistakes of adults.

In one review there is a comment to the effect of how sad it is that Koreans still dump unwanted children.

That person hasn't lived in a big enough world. Children worldwide, no matter which nation, suffer many types of abandonment and betrayal from those they consider to be their family, loved ones, carers.

And this is one type of story of such abandonment.

Sent to live in an orphanage with a view toward being adopted to a new family, most likely overseas into an entirely different culture, a little girl believes her father will always come back for her. But as so often happens and in some nations, yes, more than others, she is the unwanted child, the older child from another mother - and also a female, and father now has a new wife and a new baby - could I venture to guess, a boy?

The strikingly excellent acting from the young actress in the lead makes you believe you are seeing all those emotions and that searing pain of abandonment, from endless tears, disbelief, rage in reality, not just a movie.

She fights for herself, though. She doesn't give up although it appears she will. But from any child where the pain of abandonment and betrayal from those who you entrust to love and care for you, this film will resonate and possibly bring forward some real anxiety and memories that are unwanted. An excellent film very well done.

Life can appear very strange, when no-one is there to explain it. Especially when you're a child and you have plenty of questions. This is a big question which started the day when a father, with no explanations left his daughter at an orphanage. A Brand New Life takes its spectator to childhood - to a time when we asked many things and perhaps got no answers and no explanations why things happen exactly this way. Film is through and through seen from the eyes of a child, but brought to it's richness with the help of a wonderful script and skillful camera, allowing its spectator to put aside for a while his adult point of view and just observe, and try to understand. This is the story of a little girl, Jinhee, played marvelously by Mademoiselle Sae Ron Kim. She poses questions, but there never comes an honest answer why her life has turned out like this.

A Brand New Life achieves a perfect harmony, one element underlines the other one. The long takes allow the spectator to grasp, how long the time in orphanage seemed for Jinhee, the relatively small amounts of dialogs depicts the introvert child, whose emotions break out through some furious actions. The gray tone palette which en-tours the setting of the orphanage shows very understandable the sadness of this place.

Film touches not only an auto-biographical story, but the sad truth of life – we all know that there are thousands of places like this around the world. And there are thousands of children who, perhaps, have mastered this tragicomic show for the visitors, the potential new families.

In conclusion I'd like to say that this is a very daring film, knowing that this was a true story and a true childhood, perhaps lived through second by second as we see it on the screen. I must say that it's a brave choice to put a story like this on the screen. But its greatest value is the absence of a pathos and absence of a depiction the children as a victims of the cruelty of life. A Brand New Life is hope and search for the answers through and through it.

This movie is very beautiful to watch. I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival '09 at the Isabel Bader theatre. Though heartbreaking, I found myself wanting to make every small moment last, as if holding onto the only remaining photo of a person lost.

The acting from everybody, including all the small children, was very good and believable. They seemed honest and innocent, including the adult supporting characters. Some very impactful moments from secondary characters with small but important parts. They said things without having to actually say anything at all. I left feeling like the movie was neither too long or too short, so I found the timing perfect.

When would this be released in Canada? I would love to view it again.