By distorting and overturning expectations, the film leaves viewers bewildered. The explicit bed scenes are just fleeting moments in a much larger narrative.
In “The Hidden Face,” out November 20, Seong-jin (played by Song Seung-heon) searches for his missing girlfriend, Soo-yeon (played by Cho Yeo-jeong). However, Soo-yeon’s young man, Mi-joo (played by Park Ji-hyun), suddenly appears before him, and it turns into a unique thriller set in a confined space where the supposedly missing Soo-yeon observes the unfolding of their relationship from a hidden room perspective.
Viewers initially focus on the relationship between Seong-jin and Mi-joo, unaware of the existence of the hidden room. Mi-joo, in a guilt-ridden moment, tells Seong-jin “We shouldn’t do this in this room…“, yet he turns to the mirror with a strange expression, as if someone is looking at him from behind.
The film’s reverse chronological structure continually adds twists to the story. The real thrill starts here: it turns out they weren’t the only ones who knew. Soo-yeon had silently and desperately watched their actions from a hidden room, even though her screams were inaudible to the outside.
The plot changes unexpectedly, flashing back three months and then seven months earlier, revealing surprising connections between Soo-yeon and Mi-joo and completely launching the story.
In this film, the “hidden room” symbolizes repressed human desires. Built as an air raid shelter during the Japanese occupation, the house hides Soo-yeon’s hidden room, a space she used to satisfy her sexual desires.
Clues that Soo-yeon will control both Seong-jin and Mi-joo are scattered throughout the film. Soo-yeon’s sentence “What the hell are you, slaves?” is a direct blow to the two. Seong-jin, who rose from a poor background to become a master, and Mi-joo, an orphan who lost her parents in a car accident, will never be able to surpass Soo -yeon, the daughter of the conductor Hye-yeon (played by Park Ji-young).
Soo-yeon, once the victim, reveals herself as the master, trapping the two in a psychological prison. As a dominant female figure, she subjugates them as mere tools, reinforcing her superior position through the repeated use of symbolic terms such as “slave” and “tool.” Unlike Seong-jin and Mi-joo, who are plagued by material and emotional deficiencies, Soo-yeon is inherently different.
Soo-yeon pushes her music teacher, who owns the hidden room house and has taught both her and Mi-joo, to the limit. In the final scene, he pushes the now wheelchair-dependent teacher to the edge of a pond. Buying the house was just the beginning: it sends a clear message that he could eliminate the teacher because the teacher knows his deepest secrets. Only then does she change direction when she becomes terrified. This moment is the most beautiful portrait of Soo-yeon, who has lived a life free of shortcomings, and symbolically demonstrates why this film is labeled as a “thriller”.
In this film, Cho Yeo-jeong once again evolves into a multidimensional actress, playing Soo-yeon with a face full of frustration and anxiety in the hidden room and with an unapologetically arrogant expression outside, creating a six-figure character faces. Early viewers of pre-screenings praised his performance as “as if she were possessed“, and rightly so. The beautiful gestures shown by Park Ji-hyun become more fatal the more you think about it. Song Seung-heon, although he rose to the highest rank as conductor, is the most repressed of the three, brilliantly portraying a nuanced performance filled with cowardice, resentment, and longing.
The story created by director Kim Dae-woo is equally amazing. His intelligence, first shown in “The Servant” (2010) by changing the conventional partner dynamics of Mong-ryong and Chun-hyang and Bang-ja and Hyang-dan, shines once again here. The sensuality he depicted in “Obsessed” (2014) doesn’t just boil over in “The Hidden Face,” but blazes into a ferocious inferno.
Source: Naver
