This Korean movie will make you think: Why should you see Greenhouse in the cinema?

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A caretaker at home, Moon-young kindly cares for an old blind man and his wife. But when a terrible accident separates them, everything falls on Moon-young. He finds himself having to make an unfounded decision.

Sol-Hui Lee: First!

Twenty years ago, Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. And he went so far as to touch the Palme d’Or with his fingertips that Quentin Tarantino, we’re reluctantly told, finally cast the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. But its notoriety went beyond the Miss Grand Prix to finally put the Korean thriller No. 7 on the art world map.

Two decades later, the situation has not changed. or better. Because Kim Ji-woon is a regular occurrence, Park Chan-wook won Best Director at Cannes with The Decision to Go , and Bong Joon-ho won the Palme d’Or (for Best Picture before the Oscars) thanks to Parasite . Let’s not forget Ryo Seung-wan, author of the impressive Battleship Island, or the more drama-oriented ones like Yuli Jung (about Kim So-hee) or Lee Chang-dong.

After three short films made between 2017 and 2021, Sol-hui Lee signs his first feature film with Greenhouse and immediately finds himself between Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho, for the social aspect and the theme of class relations, and burning Lee. Chang-dong, who comes to mind when faced with a greenhouse covered with black tarps, in which the heroine lives to save her future apartment payments.

All things considered, of course. Specifically on the aesthetic level, or even in the narrative, because Greenhouse explodes in the second part, darker and more unexpected than the first, more classic, but which lays the foundation for this thriller with dramatic accents, the idea of ​​which came from the director. He thought about the story of his mother, who took care of him, then suffered from dementia.

I wanted to explore these murky realities that exist, even if they contradict our idea of ​​family.

Thus, the feature film looks at the theme of caring for the elderly, which appears regularly in Korean cinema. While taking care to approach it in a universal way, it follows a character with murky intentions whose past Sol-hui Lee refuses to reveal so that the audience can better imagine him.

“Family members may not be there for each other, reject each other, hate each other, or disappear.”he said in the press kit. “I wanted to explore these murky realities that exist, even if they contradict our idea of ​​family.” An approach that continues until the final shot, where the filmmaker refuses us a reverse shot so we can decide the outcome for ourselves.

At times tragic, Greenhouse relies on the mechanisms of the thriller to develop a social discourse around the Korean model, and its director thus approaches the prestigious authors of his country. Which he will undoubtedly be a part of if it lives up to the promise seen in this first feature film.