Short Vacation (2020, Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol) (Patreon)

71/100

People are inevitably gonna get the wrong impression when I describe this as a distaff Korean Stand by Me, but that's nonetheless broadly accurate. In lieu of going to look at a dead body, the film has its four teen* girls—the only members of their school's photography club—tasked, per one of those irritatingly "creative" assignments favored by a certain kind of would-be hip teacher, with taking pictures of "the end of the world" over summer break. Choosing to interpret this as "the terminus of our local railway line," they set out on what does indeed become a journey of self-discovery, albeit of a much more glancing and elliptical sort than either Stephen King or Rob Reiner would ever fashion. It takes a good while for individual personalities to emerge from what's initially a fairly undifferentiated mass of youthful impatience, and early conversations (which I'm guessing were largely improvised) verge on the banal. As they grow disappointed by their destination, however ("What I imagined was more like a sudden end. Just no more." "It's underwhelming"), the film becomes both funnier and more poignant, and starts complicating these kids' understanding of the world in ways that never feel obtrusive or heavy-handed. Not only is there no retroactive voiceover narration helpfully detailing life lessons, but the characters remain gratifyingly unaware that what they're experiencing now might mean more to them when they look back on it years hence, even as their chatter increasingly turns introspective and shifts toward discussions of mortality. And of course it's not a coincidence that they've been given cameras so old-school that they need to advance them by hand, with an audible racheting sound every time they prepare to snap a photo. Apparently this is a thesis film? Would never have guessed that, even if it does zip by in under 80 minutes; I didn't love the flat digital look (though it makes for a powerful contrast with the girls' interstitial stills—final one's perfect, and exactly what I'd hoped for from the moment that doorway appears), but every other aspect seems carefully considered and casually impressive. Could easily seem even stronger on second viewing, so I hope it finds a U.S. distributor soon. (Played in New Directors/New Films.) Line that's gonna pop into my head every time I'm even remotely outside of an urban/suburban area from now on: "Do you think cows walk this road?"

* I think they're meant to be either 13 or 14. At one point, they note that 2005 was before they were born, and the film presumably takes place in 2020, so they'd be 14 at the oldest. Stand by Me's quartet were all explicitly 12.