.jpg)
(by Rex Baylon)
Although it’s often seen as two different conditions, a fear of loneliness and an awareness of one’s mortality, in retrospect, are two sides of the same coin. In between birth and death we all struggle with defining ourselves and giving meaning to our lives. In Kim Hee-Jeong’s sophomore feature, Grape Candy (2012), that inner conflict is played out as a drama between three women, two adults and the third a girl perpetually frozen by death as a junior high student.
The first woman we meet, Sun-Joo, played by Park Jin-Hee, is the perennial girl who seems to have everything but actually has a secret that keeps her at arms length from everyone around her. Her nice job at the bank, charming fiancée, and comfortable life keep her distracted enough to not have to deal with her emotionally desiccated heart until an old classmate So-ra (Park Ji-Yoon) reappears in her life. Working alongside Sun-Joo’s fiancée Ji-Hoon (Choi Won-Young) to complete a new book, the film at first seems to be about a love triangle with So-ra and Sun-Joo competing for Ji-Hoon’s attention. But as quickly as that plot thread is introduced it is soon dropped and we get a series of mysterious scenes of Sun-Joo looking forlorn, So-ra rocking out to music, a woman in a bookstore who refuses to take the phone whenever So-ra calls, and most mysterious of all a flashback to three junior high girls outside, each with an expression of terror on their faces.
