A Woman’s Korea

Abstract

Research Article| June 01 2021 A Woman’s Korea: Vertigo, Women, and Work in South Korean Cinema Chris Berry Chris Berry Chris Berry is professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. His publications include Postsocialist Cinema in PostMaoist China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (Routledge, 2004); Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press, 2006), with Mary Farquhar; The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong University Press, 2010), edited with Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel; and Public Space, Media Space (MacMillan, 2013), edited with Janet Harbord and Rachel Moore. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (2021) 74 (4): 31–35. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.74.4.31 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Chris Berry; A Woman’s Korea: Vertigo, Women, and Work in South Korean Cinema. Film Quarterly 1 June 2021; 74 (4): 31–35. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.74.4.31 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentFilm Quarterly Search One film stayed with me long after the annual Far East Film Festival took place, online in summer 2020 rather than in its customary Udine location in spring: Vertigo. No, not the Hitchcock one. This Vertigo (Beotigo, Jeon Kye-soo, 2019) is a recent South Korean rom-com about a young woman office worker. It starts out as a very lame office-girl fantasy. (Yes, there will be plot spoilers.) Seo-young seems to have it all. She has escaped her abusive rural childhood via a college education and landed a job in a Seoul office full of important people doing important things. Every day, she takes the high-speed elevator to her steel-and-glass perch in the sky, and sneaks away during evening overtime for passionate sex with the most handsome young boss in the office. Unfortunately for Seo-young—but fortunately for the audience—it all starts to go wrong very quickly. It is... You do not currently have access to this content.