The Apartment With Two Women (2021, Kim Se-in) (Patreon)

70/100

First of all, whoever came up with that bland English-language title should be groin-kicked. Two Women Wearing the Same Underwear (as roughly translated from Korean, by reliable reports) much better captures this singularly abrasive film's portrait of a titanically toxic mother-daughter relationship, which begins with apparent attempted vehicular homicide—followed by a trial in which Yi-jung testifies against her mom—and then somehow escalates from there. By virtually any measure, there's a clear villain and victim here, but Kim (making her first feature; this was in last year's ND/NF) has a true artist's instincts and keeps complicating that dynamic in fascinating ways. Su-kyung comes across like Christina Crawford's remembrance of Joan crossed with "What if Jenna Maroney were real?" (I will be throwing many Skandie points away* on not just Apartment itself but Yang Mal-bok's volcanic performance), and virtually everything she says and does qualifies as reprehensible...yet Kim, without ever seeming to condone this woman's behavior, treats her with tender respect, allowing her moments of lyrical repose and romantic playfulness that could trick you into thinking that she's meant to be our identification figure. Meanwhile, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that years of emotional abuse and neglect have warped Yi-jung into someone who's almost equally unpalatable in many respects; "You're the one who made me like this," she tells her mother more than once, and while that's almost certainly true, it has also clearly become a convenient excuse. Lym Ji-ho has the trickier, more recessive role and isn't quite up to its demands (particularly when Yi-jung exhibits Forest for the Trees-level neediness with a co-worker; I never got a handle on whether or not there's meant to be physical desire involved), which does sometimes make you feel the film's 140 minutes. And I would have advised Kim to swap the order of the final two scenes. Still, a superb debut, worth seeing just for the moment in which Su-kyung's fiancé tells her, following a stint in the public pool, that he kept surfacing more to see her face again than to take a breath, the lovely romanticism of which is undermined (a) by how constantly awful the woman he loves is and (b) by the fact that he says it while covering her entire face with both hands (after having put lotion on it—"My daughter says this helps absorb it better"). I'm historically bad at predicting what Dan Sallitt will and won't like, but this film seems very Dan.  

* It'll be eligible, so if you're a voter who'd like to see it, and you don't already know how to get your hands on it (it's the obvious Source That Must Not Be Named), gimme a holler.