As per Ha Seong-nan’s short tale, Jisu, played by Kim Jae-kyung, believes that digging through her neighbor’s trash can reconcile her meal kit delivery service while also attempting to uncover story parts of the people she has never met. Upon meeting Woo-jae, her immediate neighbor, she develops feelings for him which makes her think of ways to meet him based on the things she found in his bin bags. The more Jisu gets to know Woo-jae, the more uncomfortable she begins to feel because she thinks she is betraying his trust and slowly gets unhappy. When trust starts to replace belief between the two, things start taking a dramatic turn fairly quickly.
At first glance, this seems to be a classic tale about an awkward woman and the captivating man who she loves. It focuses on how a relationship starts off as platonic and develops into an emotional connection, as the story progresses to reach a moving Tongue in Cheek conclusion.
Playing in tandem with Jisu’s career is also a sense of urban alienation. This allows us to understand that other than the warm home-cooked meal, almost everyone in the world is well off. Ready to eat meals are personalized and paired with drinks designed to offer a ‘complimentary’ flavor canvas, blending taste and culture into nothingness. In contrast, the apartment buildings they inhabit are stark in design, contemporary in styling and housed within a decaying complex.
To support her case of compelling people and their waste, Jisu frequently operates on the fringes where she detaches herself with the traditional notion of socializing, arguing that waste speaks louder than the masks people put on in social media. Because of this however, Jisu is incapable of tackling reality head on. She has enough knowledge to be dangerous, and this puts her in a position where she constantly undermines the very agency that Woo-jae seeks to obtain.
Hyun Woo plays the role of Woo-jae and he encapsulates the beauty of a K-Pop idol, though at times he does feel a bit wooden. Jisu’s mother is a character that is overly aggressive and controlling which does not feel natural in the storyline, but at the same time, her presence does explain Jisu’s behavior somewhat. If Jae-Kyung as Jisu is forced to socialize, she would only provide one-word responses, but when she is comfortable, she speaks as her character requires determination. This might be the correct attitude of a reclusive, but the enthusiasm showcased by Woo-jae makes this mannerism quite redundant, which makes their interactions a bit awkward at times.
All things considered, human relations are not the strongest portion of the film, as it is rather a love guru, narrative-focused story, with a larger success than anything else in the end. The cinematography by Kim Ji-ryong is able to put the best foot forward when it comes to the settings of apartments that have residents that live multiple lives all at once, as if viewed from a fish tank. Assistive to Kim In-young’s sparse soundtrack, there is good design, but the combination itself is not the strongest compliment one could have received.
Jisu offended no one, in her eyes she did nothing wrong, even if she barely knows the people, she learns about them, she assists them, and even has a chance to fall in love, though at the end, I have to confront the truth, the questions of honesty and trust are perhaps the central issues.
It would be better to say that Flowers of Mold is quite a beautiful mesmerizing along with what appears to be a shrugging at the social question it puts forward, it offers a good masterpiece of popular cinema. There are some downsides but it excels in the broader spectrum.
For More Movies Like Flowers of Mold (2023) Visit Solarmovie
