PEOPLE IN THE SLUM

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PEOPLE IN THE SLUM

Sep 18, 2018

Writer by Pierce Conran
View2509

1982｜108 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR BAE Chang-ho

CAST AHN Sung-ki, KIM Bo-yeon, KIM Hee-ra

RELEASE DATE July 17, 1982

CONTACT Korean Film Archive

Tel : +82 2 3153 2001

Fax : +82 2 3153 2080

Email : kofa@koreafilm.or.kr

Based on a novel by LEE Dong-cheol and featuring an early lead role for veteran star AHN Sung-ki, People in the Slum (1982) marked the debut of director BAE Chang-ho, who would become a titan of Korean cinema during the 1980s and early 1990s. A working class drama shining a lens on marginalized characters who struggle with limited opportunities, BAE’s debut shows us how a lack of choices can quickly lead to extreme highs and dangerous lows in the blink of an eye.

In the Kkobang neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul, a woman known as the Black Hand (KIM Bo-yeon) lives with her young son and her new husband (KIM Hee-ra), a tempestuous man who has no time for his stepson and rains abuse on his wife while he quickly squanders any cash that comes his way. After his release from jail, the Black Hand’s ex-husband Ju-seok (AHN Sung-ki) appears before her, but she won’t let him see his son. Though impoverished, the Black Hand and Ju-seok, at the time a pickpocket, had lived a happy marriage but after too many run-ins with the law she decided to leave him.

BAE’s take on the realist drama of LEE’s book attempts to tone down sensationalism. Yet the characters in People in the Slum, owing to their extreme circumstances, are prone to strong emotional outbursts that quickly lead them to despair or euphoria, sometimes within the same scene. With rich and empathetic performances from AHN as the ex-husband and particularly KIM Bo-yeon as the mother torn between her desires, common sense and sense of duty, the film gives us a captivating snapshot of the Korean working class in the early 1980s.

While the film’s tone is sober and its style restrained, it is nevertheless a beautifully shot film, full of carefully composed tableaux offsetting protagonists against each other in the frame, often against textured backdrops. Cinematographer CHUNG Kwang-suk zooms through the nooks and crannies of the Kkobang neighborhood, as he reaches inside the hearts and minds of BAE’s characters.

People in the Slum may primarily be focused on four characters, who aren’t all aware of how they are connected to each other at the outset, but the film is also about a community as the interactions of the protagonists are often framed against the happenings of their small town, be it the opening of a store, or a 60th birthday party. Nothing can stay secret in such a place and it follows that the identities and secrets of the various characters can only remain hidden for so long.

BAE would go on to direct several box office hits and many critically acclaimed works, including 1984’s Whale Hunting (1984) and Deep Blue Night (1985).

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