With a quiet grace, and the kind of childlike innocence in its narration that lays bare the adult melancholy all around, Shin Sang-ok‘s My Mother and Her Guest (1961) sneaks up on you. It’s a far cry from the violent, Occupation-era love triangle of his A Flower In Hell (a previous Counter-Programming entry released just 3 years prior), though both star Choi Eun-hee.
There is no moment in Shin Sang-ok‘s A Flower In Hell in which the American post-war occupation of Korea is absent. It is the film’s focal point, even when the soldiers aren’t on screen. Even when lovers are rolling around in the grass.
Stories of childhood occupy a central place in our collective storytelling legacies. Like any art form, cinema has no shortage of entries: Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Kiarostami’s Where Is The Friend’s Home?, Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive, Spielberg’s E.T.