[HanCinema's Film Review] "Family in the Bubble"

Director Ma Min-ji decided, as film students often do, to make a documentary about her own family. The first topic to come to mind was why Ma Min-ji moved out of their crumbling apartment. That begged the question of why they were living in a crumbling apartment in the first place. Through a fair amount of historical exposition coupled with real-life documentary experiences, "Family in the Bubble" explains how Ma Min-ji's family was caught up in the South Korean real estate boom that took place in the eighties and nineties, an experience which defines all of their financial decisions.

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As we see throughout "Family in the Bubble", in reality, Ma Min-ji's parents are just excessive gamblers. The supposed legitimacy of real estate markets has tricked them into thinking they are not gamblers, but there really just isn't any other way to describe what they do. They own so much property that they've even forgotten about it, so that it falls into arrears. They're so obsessed with the idea of making short-term profit that they fail to consider that real estate is a long term investment.

It's also a game that's largely rigged in the favor of the rich and powerful. Ma Min-ji's parents were never particularly good financial decision makers, but "reforms" made by President Kim Dae-jeong in the wake of the East Asian Financial Crisis effectively made it impossible for them to compete. It's not coincidental that it was only when those reforms took effect that Ma Min-ji's parents went from moving around constantly to maximize their investments to having to stay in the same crummy apartment for fifteen years on end.

Still, while it's easy to blame major players in the real estate market for their troubles, in the end, Ma Min-ji's parents are the ones who time and again show astonishingly bad judgment. They refuse to pay for Ma Min-ji's college education, forcing her into debt. Yet by the end Ma Min-ji discovers to her shock, that...well, I don't want to ruin it, but let's just say that Ma Min-ji's parents consider real estate investment to be the solution to literally every problem.

But what really makes all of this so sad is that Ma Min-ji's parents were just searching for a better middle class life, one that didn't involve so much toil. It's discouraging to look at their life experience and see how blatantly illusory that dream was. It's even more discouraging to see that Ma Min-ji's parents continue to believe, despite everything that has happened, that they are just one big score away from permanent financial security.

Their story is horribly sad and depressing. Yet at the same time it's all so patently absurd it's hard to avoid bursting out in laughter every so often. Ma Min-ji's parents act like a crabby married couple from a sitcom, whose main redeeming quality is obvious misguided love for their only daughter. I'm not sure whether they would learn anything from seeing themselves on film, although I certainly did.

Review by William Schwartz

"Family in the Bubble" is directed by Ma Min-ji.