Sundance: In Between Days
Sunday evening, January 22, 2006. Named after a Cure song, this film about two Korean-American teenagers dealing with the dual tribulations of teenagerness and cultural assimilation promised to keep the mood on a less-than-cheery note. And it succeeded. This was one of three films I saw at the festival that won post-festival awards, winning the Special Jury Prize for Independent Vision. If The Proposition was true to the original mandate of the festival, In Between Days honored the festival’s mid-1990s aura with a very raw and very "indie" aesthetic. Indeed, it was director So Yong Kim’s first film — and she "discovered" starring actress Jiseon Kim working at a coffee shop in New Jersey. I saw this one solo, Molly, Kelly and Molly decided to go back to the condo to rest (two of them had gone to an 8am screening of Kinky Boots, which I had skipped), and I’m glad that I went to see it. It has a Wong Kar Wai sort of feel to it that helps its tone immensely. And its setting, in a non-descript urban enviromnent — somewhere in the shadows of a big city — helps underscore the shadowed identities that the two protagonists are struggling to shed.
