Secret Sunshine
Secret Sunshine is a 2007 South Korean drama film written and directed by Lee Chang-dong. The screenplay based on the short story "The Abject" by Lee Cheong-jun that focuses on a woman as she wrestles with the questions of grief, madness and faith. The Korean title "Miryang" is named after the city where the film was set and filmed; "Secret Sunshine" is the literal translation. For her performance, Jeon Do-yeon won Prix d'interprétation féminine at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The film also won Best Film at the Asian Film Awards and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The film sold 1,710,364 tickets in South Korea.
Plot
After her husband dies in a traffic accident, Lee Shin-ae and her only child Jun move to Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, her husband's hometown, to start life anew. While entering the city, her car breaks down. A mechanic in Miryang, Kim Jong-chan, fixes her car and assists Shin-ae as she opens a piano academy and attempts to purchase land to build a house on. Jong-chan claims he is only trying to be a Good Samaritan.One afternoon, Shin-ae meets a middle-school girl, whose father is Jun's daycare teacher, Park Do-seop. Just outside her home, Shin-ae hears from a pharmacist that the solution to her problems is belief in God. Shin-ae is skeptical but nevertheless takes the pharmacist's scripture. At home, Shin-ae and Jun engage in a prank where Shin-ae pretends to be unable to find Jun.
Shin-ae's brother visits from Seoul, wondering why she is in Miryang considering that her husband cheated on her. Shin-ae denies this but still hates her late husband for unspecified reasons. Before leaving, the brother tells Jong-chan that he is not Shin-ae's type.
One night, Shin-ae returns home late after partying to discover that Jun is missing. She receives a phone call and draws all of the money from her bank account to pay as ransom. Appalled at the pitiful amount of money she paid, Shin-ae says attempt to buy land was a lie to appear rich; she had no more money.
Returning home, Shin-ae discovers the girl peering into her residence; the latter refuses to explain why and escapes. Later, police officers arrive to take her to a reservoir, where Jun was drowned. The murderer is swiftly captured and he is Jun's daycare teacher Do-seop. Yet Shin-ae doesn't seem vengeful and sheds no tears at Jun's funeral.
Feeling unwell one day, Shin-ae visits the pharmacist who convinces her to join their faith, though she doesn't understand why God would let an innocent child like Jun die. Followed by Jong-chan, Shin-ae soon becomes a believer and claims to have found inner peace; even Jong-chan starts going to church.
At home, Shin-ae hears noises in her bathroom and opens the door, crying out Jun's name, but the bathroom user is a little boy from Jun's daycare. Dropping off the other daycare children, Shin-ae sees the girl being bullied but doesn't intervene.
Shin-ae's church friends throw her a birthday party, during which she says she will visit Do-seop in prison to forgive him. Jong-chan doesn't understand why she needs to visit him to forgive but accompanies her. Surprisingly, Do-seop says he also found God and that God absolved him of his sins. Shin-ae cannot understand how God could forgive him before she has.
Shin-ae later steals a CD of the song "Lies" from a store and blasts it on a loudspeaker where a group has gathered to thank God. That night, she receives a phone call, which she claims to Jong-chan to have been from the kidnapper; he dismisses the idea but tells her to calm down and arranges a dinner date the next day. Shin-ae walks into the pharmacy, however, and seduces the pharmacist's husband, but he cannot perform and she becomes sick. That evening, she goes to Jong-chan, who angrily rejects her proposal for sex. On the way home, she passes by a vigil for her by the pharmacist couple; it is interrupted when a rock is hurled at a window. At home, Shin-ae slashes her wrists.
On the day of her discharge from the hospital, Jong-chan takes her to a salon, where the girl now works, to do her hair. She says she was sent to juvenile detention for hanging with the wrong crowd and quit school. In the middle of her cut, Shin-ae leaves the salon. At home, she begins cutting her own hair. Jong-chan arrives, offering to hold up a mirror for her.
Cast
- Jeon Do-yeon as Lee Shin-ae
- Song Kang-ho as Kim Jong-chan
- Jo Young-jin as Park Do-seop
- Kim Young-jae as Lee Min-ki
- Seon Jeong-yeop as Jun
- Song Mi-rim as Jeong-ah
- Kim Mi-hyang as Deacon Kim
- Lee Yoon-hee as Elder Kang
- Kim Jong-soo as President Shin
- Cha Mi-kyung as tailor shop owner
- Lee Sung-min as chef
- Kim Mi-kyung as dressmaker
- Lee Joong-ok as Hope House employee
- Yeom Hye-ran as in-law relative
Critical response
"Secret Sunshine" received acclaim in the U.S. in 2010. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 94% based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 7.68/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Plumbing the depths of tragedy without succumbing to melodrama, Chang-dong Lee's Secret Sunshine is a grueling, albeit moving, piece of beautifully acted cinema." With 6 reviews, it scored 84 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". A.O. Scott of the New York Times called the film "clear, elegant and lyrical. The experience of watching films is not always pleasant... yet his quiet and exacting humaneness infuses even the most dreadful moments with an intimation of grace." Noel Murray, writing for the A.V. Club, called it "a frequently beautiful film with a cold, dark heart" and praised Do-yeon's "powerful performance". Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice wrote that "the red-eyed Jeon, landing a Best Actress at Cannes in 2007 and unforgettable as well in The Housemaid, goes to hell and back." In 2019, director Hirokazu Kore-eda named it as the best film of the 21st century, praising Lee's "deep insight into human nature". In 2020, The Guardian ranked it number 7 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema.