One of the best surprises of the 2014 Cannes festival, A Girl at My Door is about a young policewoman (Doona Bae) who’s transferred to a seaside fishing village in Yeosu, in the southern backblocks of South Korea, after some unstated infraction. Small and slight, she tries hard to fit in to her new station, but she is the only female cop in a town that’s almost lawless. Old women career around drunk on motorcycles and the fishing boats are full of illegal workers. She befriends a 14-year-old girl (Sae-ron Kim) who is constantly beaten by her alcoholic father, a local bigwig. The cop has her own secret problem with alcohol, but that’s not why she has been banished. When her girlfriend turns up, her precarious friendship with the teenager becomes ever more dangerous. The debut feature of 34-year-old July Jung deals frankly with issues of sexuality and gender in a refreshing way. The film’s style is restrained, but the criticism of the culture of repression in Korea is extremely trenchant and powerful. This is certainly not a film that aims to make Korean men feel good about themselves!
