House of Hummingbird (2018)

Director: Bora Kim
Stars: Park Ji-hu, Kim Sae-byeok, Jeong In-gi
Runtime: 138 minutes

Synopsis: Seoul 1994, in the year the Seongsu Bridge collapsed, 14-year-old Eunhee wanders the city searching for love.

Verdict: Bora Kim’s semi-autographical coming-of-age movie about a young girl’s struggles with patriarchal abuse, acceptance, and identity during the mid-1990s is an intimate invitation into the bubble in which our protagonist resides.

It’s a powerful watch from beginning to end in which Eun-hee’s relationship with her family, friends, and teachers is examined from more than one angle. She’s admirably portrayed by rising star Park Ji-hu who effectively succeeds in capturing her character’s many layers of exasperation. Her family considers her to be an embarrassment; her teachers consider her to be a delinquent with no bright future, and you can tell that her lonesome nature has her on the edge of a psychological breakdown at all times. It’s her against the world, and while she’s not ready to give up that fight just yet, the weight on her shoulders is significantly getting heavier every passing day. What hurts her the most, however, is when the few allies that she has turn on her in times of need, doubling down on her perspective on solitude.

Watching “House of Hummingbird” is similar to drinking ginger tea. It’s a smooth watch, easy on the eyes and the mind, that will leave the audience with a bitter aftertaste in the best possible way. It acts as an in-depth but gloomy character study of a true underdog that you can’t help but root for, and I’m extremely grateful that Kim unleashed it onto the world.

FINAL GRADE: 8/10