Highly Overrated But Still Good

Expected more

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Winner of the Best Asian Film Award at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival, and screened out of competition at Cannes this year, writer-director Ounie Lecomte's debut feature film is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young South Korean girl who got abandoned by her single dad to an orphanage where she yearns a life of normalcy, still harbouring hopes that she'll be reunited with the only family she knows.One can imagine just how much reference from Lecomte's own life got written into the film. Being unable to speak Korean and has French as a first language herself, Lecomte's tale follows the adventures of Jinhee (Kim Sae Ron), a precocious little girl who ends up in France which probably accounted for the director's own language skills or the lack thereof in her native tongue, and throughout the story you'll find it pretty heart-wrenching especially when Jinhee tries to resist blending into the scheme of things in the orphanage, knowing that to go with the flow will mean to surrender all memory of her loved one and life as she knew, to making herself appealing for a new foster family to pick her up for adoption.Thus beneath the exterior sweetness lies strong feelings of resentment and anger even, being unable to fathom how her dad can give her up so that she can supposedly lead a better life in a foster home in the mid 70s Korea, and likely one to be overseas given the kind of folks who drop by the orphanage to look for children to adopt. The story's episodic in nature as the orphanage serves as a temporary holding point in her life in between a giant leap of change, and flits between how Jinhee finds every opportunity to resist change, and how each time she embraces a little change through friendships forged, her heart gets broken all over again.And having one's heart broken too many times probably doesn't bode well for a proper, balanced development, given that her trust with loved ones and friends got betrayed in the highest order. The gem and revelation of the film is the tour de force performance by Kim Sae Ron as Jinhee, who almost single-handedly lifts the film from start to finish giving an unbelievably strong performance for her age, dealing with the range of positive and negative emotions like a seasoned veteran.You can't help but to fall in love with the little girl, and share in her despair at being abandoned, and weep a little with her when promises made become shattered. Casting Sae Ron is a stroke of brilliance, as the actress' performance was key to make or break this film, and thankfully, she was the miracle to breathe life into what was a straightforward story dealing with human emotions, nevermind the bleak landscape that spelt doom and gloom. This performance alone is well worth getting a ticket to the film.

I read some of the reviews for this film and I agree, this is a pretty depressing and yet engaging movie but the audience will be left wanting more when the credits starts rolling and not because the movie is mind blowing or anything. And Son Rae Kim was just perfect for this role, she is a very good actress for her age and is looking forward for her to make it in the movie business. The other children in the movie did a fine job as well. But I am just curious why a big time actor such as Kyung-gu Sol played a very small part as Jinhee's father, when anyone else could have done the role since it doesn't even show his face. This is the first movie I saw about children in the Korean orphanage, and was well worth the time. It was sad watching the children in the movie struggling and doing there best to get adopted and to know the problem of many children ending up in the orphanages still goes on today.7.8/10

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.