This story is a remake of Lee Man-hee’s Late Autumn, which no longer exists. When we first encounter Hyo-soon (Kim Ji-mi), she is boarding the train for her hometown to meet the only man she has ever loved, a meeting we are told will never take place. Through flashbacks, we learn that while serving time in prison for unpremeditated murder, Hyo-soon was allowed by a compassionate parole officer (Park Jeong-ja) to make the very same journey several years earlier.
Along the way, the two women are greeted by a young man (Lee Jeong-gil) who offers them a lunch box from the train station, a gesture that would later hold great significance for Hyo-soon. The woman had until then experienced nothing but grief at the hands of men, having been raped several times. Her loss of faith in humanity, compounded by the loss of her mother, left her with little reason to live, and she had already made repeated attempts to take her own life. The chance meeting of the young man restored her will to live, and the two lovers vowed to meet again after her release from prison in two years.
The haunting theme song and the uncharacteristic use of voice-over convey Hyo-soon’s longing and contribute to the air of melancholy that permeates this, the most subjective and intensely personal film in the collection. Long stretches of time pass on the train without any dialogue, punctuated only by the sound of the train rolling along the tracks. The little details of ordinary life: a coke bottle rolling along the floor, the parole officer feeding pink candies to her prisoner, the young man blowing cigarette smoke rings to amuse the women—acquire an added gravity as they are recalled in flashbacks. The frantic attempts by the couple to embrace one another through a prison wall, efforts thwarted by the parole officer and several policemen, make a vivid impression, and Park Jin-pyo made use of this scene in You Are My Sunshine (너는 내 운명, 2005).
You can read an extensive review of the whole box set here:
http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/korean-dvd-review-kim-ki-young-collection/
The print shows the effects of age and is covered with dust specks. The English subtitles are awkward, with many grammatical errors. The left border kept moving throughout the entire movie, so that's why it looks like badly cropped.
English subs inlcuded in the subpack for both the film and the second audio track (commentary by Chung Sung-il (film critic) ).
Director Kim Ki-young Special Documentary (52 minutes)
This documentary was made on the occasion of the retrospective of the director’s work at the 2nd Pusan International Film Festival. Director Kim was accompanied by cinematographer Jeong Il-seong and actress Park Jeong-ja at the press conference. The room was practically empty. Clearly choked up and eyes welling with tears, Jeong said that he felt sorry that only one director deigned to attend Kim’s press conference. Know who that was? Hint: he just completed his hundredth film last year.
After a screening of The Housemaid, Kim tells the audience that filmmaking was his hobby, and that he was an amateur director, by which he meant that he was completely self-taught and had no business sense whatsoever. He went on to say that it was thanks to the support of his wife, who produced his films, that he was able to pursue his filmmaking career. It was when as many as 300 films and 1000 videos a year began to inundate the market that Kim discontinued making movies. In 1997, he said, Koreans, maybe sick of watching American films, were starting to watch Korean films again. This documentary also contains the same footage found on Kim Ki-young on Kim Ki-young.
