Only the city remains—only it is capable of holding her. After an unexpected breakup, May, a Korean woman living in Berlin, searches for signs of healing as she wanders through streets and gardens. At every corner, she is carried back to her Seoul, a jumble of times and places and a lingering sense of not belonging. It is within a new routine, in the mundanity of everyday life—nights of clementines on the sofa, dance classes—that May keeps going.
For her first feature film, director Lan-Xi Ruan has chosen a Korean protagonist, May, who is going through something very similar to her own experience: that of being an expatriate living in Berlin. She is lost, on the one hand, amidst memories of a house, a familiar space, a home that no longer belongs to her, and, on the other, immersed in the immediacy of her life and all the moments that make it up: a dinner that turns into a break-up, a living room where the intimacy of friendship is lived out, a forest where she feels the freedom of nature, or a walk where she encounters an ex-lover and acts out her fantasies of confrontation. The director films all this with a charm, a clarity and an elegance that is difficult to describe, but palpable on screen. The events are subtle, yet they reveal clues to May’s inner life. These everyday moments, which we as viewers can glimpse without being detected, are also entertaining (sometimes anecdotal, sometimes playful), because even amidst the melancholy, humour shines through.
Ana Cabral Martins
