[HanCinema's Film Review] "Welcome to Playhouse"

Director Kim Soo-vin's parents exposed her to a wide variety of mostly English speaking cultures, and encouraged Kim Soo-vin to live life on her own generally free-spirited terms, just so long as she maintains the maturity of a well-grounded adult. In the first frame of "Welcome to Playhouse", we see that Kim Soo-vin has become pregnant, from a serious long-term monogamous relationship. Kim Soo-vin has a career, yet is not quite done with her education. So how exactly should a well-grounded adult act in that situation?

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Even by the end Kim Soo-vin does not purport to have a satisfying answer to that question. As a young parent, her life is filled with stress. It's obviously the baby's fault, although since no one is so gauche as to admit this, Kim Soo-vin ends up fighting with her husband and in-laws over all sorts of other random trivial issues instead. Probably my favorite was her husband's big career choice, which really does come out of nowhere considering he was a musical actor when Kim Soo-vin got pregnant.

Interestingly enough, the documentary camera does not villainize Kim Soo-vin's new family, although as the put upon daughter-in-law, Kim Soo-vin could no doubt easily find a sympathetic audience were she to choose to do so. It's just...well, the mixed bag of passion. Kim Soo-vin's parents are nice enough people, yet as they practically admit by the end, they had absolutely no idea what to make of their daughter getting married young. Those are not comforting words to a young woman who does not have the slightest clue how to advance from being a kid to being a mother.

Kim Soo-vin wants to meet high expectations because in her estimation that's what a mother should do. It's what the grandmothers do. Even when "Welcome to Playhouse" devolves into fanciful crude drawings or repeated shots of a baby crying / vomiting / finding other ways to make a ridiculous mess, director Kim Soo-vin maintains a position that, while not entirely optimistic, tacitly acknowledges that the only way to play house correctly is to keep practicing at playing the game.

"Welcome to Playhouse" is really a sort of banal film, in that all it really does is very accurately describe the apprehensions that come with having a child by examining how this stress affects adult relationships and provoke fights. I found the presentation fascinating mainly because these kinds of stories are so rare in film. Anyone who's had to deal with in-laws and babies has probably found a lot to emphathize with based on reading this review alone, yet somehow the villain in these stories always manages to end up being either loose morals or patriarchy, depending on your political persuasion.

On that note, kudos to Kim Soo-vin for finding the more intriguing middle path. She's edited an obviously huge amount of raw material into a fairly compelling simplified piece about the emotional roller coaster of having a kid- one that only manages to steady when her daughter starts talking in coherent sentences. Was Kim Soo-vin ready to have a kid right then? Probably not. But then, who is?

Review by William Schwartz

"Welcome to Playhouse" is directed by Kim Soo-vin