Cinema | ‘Nobody’s Lover’: Women facing love

VALENCIA. Yujin is a shy and introverted eighteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother until she leaves her alone to start a relationship with a man. She knows nothing about life, she is extremely innocent and vulnerable and has no emotional tools to deal with the bumps in the road. That’s why she’s so angry. The only thing that is clear to her is that she has to get ahead on her own, so while she finishes school, she will look for a part-time job in a pizzeria. In this small microcosm, the young woman will enter into a relationship with a series of characters, with her boss (always protective of her), with her girlfriend (who will become her best friend) and with two young men. who are attracted to her.

Nobody’s Lover It is an initiatory love story that immerses us in the ups and downs of relationships from a strictly female point of view. Until a few years ago it was not very common to find women behind the camera in Korean cinematography, but it is something that is beginning to change and, in that sense, Han Inmi, the director of the film, inserts herself into this new current willing to bring down the taboos of the country’s heteropatriarchal society.

Therefore, during Yujin’s path of discovery, toxic relationships will be revealed in a revealing way. Not only in those that the protagonist will be involved, but also in those of her parent, as if it were a vicious circle that seems to perpetuate itself and that can only be stopped with the awareness of both women and the need to protect themselves. . In fact, the lack of communication between mother and daughter quietly becomes one of the themes of the film. How ties or the absence of them create rootlessness and emotional fragility. Yujin is alone, in fact her mother is too and their respective need to redeem themselves through love, to find those affections that both have been deprived of, will lead them to make the wrong decisions when it comes to giving themselves to others. .

The film advances in the same timid way that defines the protagonist, adopting its own changes of pace when making decisions. Thus, the director manages to immerse us in that time of constant ups and downs that are generated during adolescence, together with that constant feeling of disorientation and emptiness of her.

Han Inmi proves to be a delicate and virtuous director, sophisticated when it comes to putting into images that transition state that Yujin goes through from helplessness to empowerment. She does this through small, almost imperceptible details, which elevates the film to an extraordinary level of expressive subtext. And during that journey we will find fear, anger, melancholy, indecision until it ends in the embrace, in the reunion and healing forgiveness that will make the protagonist after all her misunderstandings, in an adult and independent person. .

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