52 Films by Women Vol 7. 7. THE APARTMENT WITH TWO WOMEN (Director: Kim Se-in)
Few films have depicted the brittle love-hate relationship between a mother and a daughter as vividly as Korean writer-director Kim Se-in in her debut feature, The Apartment with Two Women . For Yoon Su-kyung (Yang Mal-bok), her twenty-something, emotionally insular daughter, Kim Yi-jung (Lym Ji-ho) is an encumbrance. They share a cluttered apartment with little privacy. When Yi-jung disappoints her mother, she is beaten, receiving a series of swiping blows from which she shields herself when not able to restrain her mother who, in spite of age, is stronger. Yi-jung doesn’t have a saviour on the horizon. The film put me in mind of any number of Hollywood melodramas where a mother sinks her hopes, dreams and finally frustrations in her daughter, who yearns to escape emotional blackmail. But Kim Se-in takes the drama to physical extremes – Yoon Su-kyung drives the family car at her daughter during one such row, claims it as an accident and attempts to sue the car company, ...