House of the Seasons
장손
Structured around both commemorative rites for departed ancestors and actual funerals that occasionally draw young, failing actor Kim Seong-jin (Kang Seung-ho) back from Seoul to his family home in rural Daegu, Oh Jung-min’s feature debut tracks multiple generations of the extended Kim family. At its centre is a tofu factory that, like the family itself, keeps having to evolve with the times to stay afloat.
There is something of Ozu about this portrait of a functioning but fractious family, where legacy is as much burden as boon, and where successive generations prove equally reluctant to keep the traditional business – and the business of tradition – going. As Seong-jin observes everything – good and bad – about his relatives, and himself must carry scars from his past and bonds into the future, Oh’s sympathetic but ultimately bleak film moves from the white tofu at its beginning to a different kind of white-out at the end.
DIRECTOR: OH JUNG-MIN
WRITER: OH JUNG-MIN
CAST: KANG SEUNG HO, WOO SANGJEON, SON SOOK
