There are so many scenes in House of Hummingbird that I want to dissect most made my heart quietly drop. These quiet moments of hushed away understandings reveal the inner battles that others face as well: the stories that makeup one’s experience that forever go untold, but whose weight manifests in one’s body nevertheless. That is, until the film alludes to the fact that Yuri also might be facing physical abuse at home. Young-ji is the only person who Eun-hee feels comfortable telling about her brother’s abuse. The impact of finding a role-model figure in one’s life should never be underestimated. Young-ji teaches Eun-hee to stand up for herself and to stop letting others push her around, forming a bond between teacher and student glued together by mutual love and trust. As an adolescent, and even as an adult, this feeling is difficult to come by. For the first time, it seems like someone actually sees her for who she is. The relationship that Eun-hee develops with her new Chinese tutor, Young-ji (Sae-hyuk Kim), is pivotal to her positive development as an individual. She’s no longer an individual, but rather part of a family unit, succumbing to the person her parents, brother, and sister expect her to be. Then, Eun-hee comes back home and her personality is muted. When Eun-hee is with her boyfriend, Ji-wan (Yoon-seo Jeong), she unravels her guarded shell and even makes the first move to kiss him, bringing him up a secluded stairwell and leaning forward. The shy kid that Eun-hee’s classmates define her as disappears when Eun-hee is with her friend Yuri (Hye-in Seol), as they giggle and write notes to each other during class, engaging in the playful and mischievous behavior all eighth graders do. As Eun-hee navigates her adolescence, she faces various turning points that shape the way she approaches the world, whether it's forming a close connection with her Chinese teacher or being physically abused by her brother.īora Kim is incredible at breaking down the notion of “the self,” and revealing the impossible nature of answering the question, “who are you?” Eun-hee is not constrained to one version of herself, as we see her mood and actions shift depending on who she is with. The film shows different sides to Eun-hee (Ji-hu Park)’s life, from the person she becomes as soon as she steps through her front door, to being the quiet, unintelligent kid her classmates gossip about at school. House of Hummingbird is set in Seoul, South Korea, and revolves around an eighth grade girl named Eun-hee. In many ways, watching House of Hummingbird felt like I was watching a God’s-eye reel of my former self. By delicately contrasting and comparing the way the film’s 14 year old protagonist sees herself with the image that others have of her, Kim crafts a full-bodied human, whose identity is a messy collage of who she thinks she is and how others perceive her. Bora Kim’s House of Hummingbird deeply moved me in a way that I did not expect it to.
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