28th Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Kim Do-young, director of “Once We Were Us”

After her film Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 (2019) sparked loud controversy in South Korea for its social and political criticism, the actress and director Kim Do-young has returned with her second feature, Once We Were Us, part of the competition at the 28th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

This emotional drama is a remake of the 2018 Chinese movie Us and Them and follows the story of two former lovers (played by Koo Kyo-hwan and Moon Ka-young) whose relationship faltered as they tried to navigate adulthood in the face of social and economic chaos in their country. Many years later, their paths cross once again, and they try to find an answer to the ultimate question – “Could things have been different?”

Do-young relocated this realistic love story from China to South Korea and set it in a difficult period in 2008, when protestors hit the streets in what was then a chaotic city of Seoul. The director wanted to tell a story about the obstacles such unrest can present to people, but also to explore an honest representation of real love, embodied in the famous saying: “Sometimes to grow, you need to grow apart.”

So, this is not a sad story – this is a story of love that had to be extinguished before these individuals could flourish on their own.

Kim Do-young was at FEFF this year, and we sat down with her on the sidelines of the festival to discuss her latest film.

View of the Arts: Your film is based on the 2018 Chinese movie Us and Them by Rene Liu. What attracted you to the original story?

Kim Do-young: Since this is my second feature film and my first remake, I asked myself why I was doing it. The answer was simple: I liked it. So, I focused on figuring out what I appreciated the most about that story. What stood out to me was the phrase from the father’s letter [in that film] which became a key inspiration for my work. Without losing the beauty and ideas of the original piece that inspired me, I wanted to focus on two people parting in a good, healthy way. It’s not necessary for a romantic relationship between a man and a woman to be fully realised or marked by something definitive; what matters is that people meet at a certain time of their lives and fill that time meaningfully. I thought that was something valuable to express.

Instead of emphasising marriage or a relationship that might feel burdensome or regressive, I wanted to show two people who are able to understand their emotions and their past. Now that I’ve reached a certain age – having gone through my 20s, 30s, and 40s – I felt I could share this message with a wider audience.

VOA: What you knew from the start, you are going to keep from the original, and what was necessary to change to tell your own story?

Kim Do-young: I really liked some of the ideas in the original. For example, the setting of black-and-white in the present day, the father’s letter, the storyline of the couple who meet when they’re poor, and their love is sincere, but they run into a wall of reality. I could relate to that a lot. So, I wanted to keep all of that but tell the story of a good breakup as well. I didn’t want to leave a feeling of sadness in it.

I wanted my movie to be about having a good goodbye – giving a good farewell to each other. I didn’t want it to be a desperate story. And I wanted the female lead to be as successful as the male lead. And of course, relocating it from China to Korea required adapting it to a different environment. I focused on the typical characteristics of Korea – the time, the atmosphere, the society, and many other things that could capture that period in Seoul.

VOA: It is quite rare to see on screen a realistic love story. It’s either “they lived happily ever after” or a tragic, pessimistic ending. But this one is neither of them. How important do you think it is to actually give a voice to these kinds of stories, and do you feel we lack them?

Kim Do-young: I don’t really believe that we lack them. I think there are already some voices that express this point of view. I’m not sure about more commercial films, but in independent cinema, we do see and hear a lot of voices in many different ways. I think the different story tellings are conveying the different realities we’re living. And I believe that reality exists, always in every story. It doesn’t have much to do with how the story concludes or which genre it is.

VOA: How did you cast the actors for the film, and did their chemistry come naturally or require time and effort to develop?

Kim Do-young: I admired Moon Ga-young’s work before, through a television series, and wanted to collaborate with her for a long time. When I offered her the role, she said she had been waiting for such an opportunity, so everything happened very smoothly. As for Koo Kyo-hwan, I had admired his unique energy since his independent film days. He’s a very distinctive actor; someone I had always hoped to work with as well.

As for the chemistry between the two actors, I think the answer lies in how we filmed the movie. We shot everything in chronological order. So, you can see two people who meet, get to know each other, and gradually fall in love. At the beginning, they were hesitant, shy, and not fully open to each other. In the end, when we filmed the present timeline, the actors told me they felt something very strange emotionally. Seeing each other again after filming the past scenes brought up complex feelings. I believe the chemistry that comes through so strongly is thanks to this chronological approach to filming. It allowed the actors to gradually open their hearts to each other.

VOA: In your previous movie, Kim Ji-young: Born 1982, you were exploring women’s identity and autonomy, as well as the impact of society on them. In both movies, we have strong female leads. How do you see the evolution of your female characters? Are you planning to continue your work in this direction, exploring similar topics?

Kim Do-young: I think it’s extremely important that we see a lot of portraits of many different women, to have a wide variety of female characters. We do have crazy women, or women with strong characters or ones with softer tendencies, so I believe that there must be a variety of women that we portray, because that is exactly how we are. We are all very different and diverse. If we only pick a few of these characters, that would create a sort of representative image about women, and that should not be the path to go through. Like the male characters so far, we should have a bigger number of representations of women, because only in that way, one day we won’t have to distinguish male and female, but just see the representation of ourselves as individuals inside that collective imagery.

Written and interviewed by Vedrana Bogdanović, who was part of the FEFF Campus initiative for emerging film industry talent.

_{Question 4 was asked during the FEFF Talk.}

_{View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.}