House of Hummingbird Illuminates a Dismal Life with Soft Affection

“Among all the people you know, how many do you really understand?”

Sometimes you can watch a movie wholeheartedly in expectation of something great, only for it not to meet that threshold to the point its’ true value doesn’t register with you. And sometimes you can watch a movie just to occupy your attention out of boredom or depression (or a sense of obligation to have something to write about), and it unexpectedly engrosses you out of nowhere to a level too innately personal and passionate for a Friday afternoon on a television set. I didn’t know I needed to see Kim Bora’s House of Hummingbird until I was watching it and in the throes of its beautiful and intimate portrait of a young girls’ emotionally turbulent life. It premiered at the Busan Film Festival nearly two years ago and has enjoyed a gradual festival run all over the world since then, picking up numerous awards in the process -before hitting VOD in North America sometime last month.

The film lives in the often sombre world of fourteen year old Kim Eun-hee (Park Ji-hoo), who deals with a toxic family and fluctuating friendships and relationships in 1994 Seoul. Kim Bora draws heavily from her own childhood in her depiction of these, as well as the environment and national context that they’re set against. It’s infused with that very personal flavour and intense subjectivity despite its’ coming-of-age structure being rather conventional, which lends it a greater depth and more searing resonance. Eun-hee is both a typical girl her age whom anyone could latch onto and a highly specific creation with specific demons she lives with palpable beneath her solemn demeanour. Park is sensational, in one of the best child performances in years, as she emanates that blistering sadness in tandem with little joys, such as doodling with her friend in class or hanging out with her juvenile boyfriend.

Such things are the welcome respite from a home life where her father is an adulterous disciplinarian, her mother neglects her, her brother abuses her, and her sister, though well-intentioned, often ignores her for her own vices. But even those comforts are fleeting as her peer relationships grow troubled too and she grapples with an ailment requiring surgery that frightens her. All the while Kim cultivates an irresistible naturalism of time and place, behaviour and dialogue from the most dramatic exchanges to the littlest details that puts me in mind of the best films of Hirokazu Kore-eda. And just as in those films, the quiet emotional earnestness of the piece has a way of sneaking up on and moving you.

The one consistent ray of positivity in Eun-hee's life is her kindly Chinese language tutor Kim Young-ji played by a radiant Kim Sae-byuk. In some ways she's the typical wise, loving teacher type with an invested interest in not only the education but emotional well-being of her student. As someone not a whole lot older than Eun-hee herself, she's also a role model and seemingly the only person who really empathizes with what the girl is going through. But in epitomizing such an inspiring teacher and lovable human being, Kim Sae-byuk keeps her vulnerable and relatable -her reassurances, postulations, and mindfulness having that air of coming from a place of lived experience. The kind of person who you'd want to know, enlightening the lives of everyone around her in tangible, believable ways.

House of Hummingbird is quite the feminist film for this, and for the other significant relationships Eun-hee has with women or girls (while figures like her mother and sister appear to be dealing with their own applicable issues, the male characters who occupy her world are far less sympathetic and more distant); and for how specific to girlhood her attitude and actions are. There’s a quiet acceptance when she hears of her friend Ji-sooks’ own experience with domestic violence, a meaningful schism between them when she is scapegoated for shoplifting. At a point, she returns to the boyfriend who cheated on her as a way of retaining some stability in light of the family drama and impending surgery -a thing which itself puts her mortality at the forefront of her mind. To the extent that it does, the film illustrates her burgeoning sexuality in a refreshing way. She is curious, but not overtly so, of the liaisons between her sister and her boyfriend, and at various points is herself romantically interested in a boy and then a girl -but never does the narrative openly comment on or identify her orientation, because at her age she could hardly be expected to either. And of course there’s something uniquely special and liberating about her relationship with Young-ji that I can’t quite put my finger on, only that I never want it to end.

As much as the film often seems divorced from its’ period setting, House of Hummingbird takes place in 1994 for a reason. Of course there was the death of Kim Il-sung in North Korea which renewed tensions between the two nations and is referenced in the film. But Kim Bora is more concerned with another notable disaster in Seoul from that year that clearly left a mark on her. On October 21st, the Seongsu Bridge over the Han River collapsed, killing thirty-two and injuring seventeen others. It takes place at the climax of the film and Kim means to emphasize its’ impact both on her (through Eun-hee) and South Korea on a larger scale. Like the death of the dictator north, it represents a pivotal moment and uncertainty for the future, for Eun-hee. But it’s not necessarily a bad kind of uncertainty. It’s something she can reckon with and overcome. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in watching House of Hummingbird was that in spite of everything Eun-hee goes through, all of the difficulties, the dark and depressing moments, the letdowns, the fears, the heartbreaks, all culminating in this incident of devastation, I felt good for her at the end. Not a lot in her family life had changed, or her personal prospects, but she was a richer human being for what she had learned, from Young-ji and herself. I don’t know where the title comes from or what it means, but a quick google search tells me that hummingbirds are the smallest species of bird capable of vocal learning, which allows for their unique singing. I have no doubt Eun-hee will produce something equally beautiful from her learning as well.

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/