Samaritan Girl

Infobox Korean_Film | name = Samaritan Girl

---

caption =
writer = Kim Ki-duk
starring = Kwak Ji-min
Lee Eol
Han Yeo-reum
director = Kim Ki-duk
producer = Bae Jeong-min
distributor = Cineclick Asia
Tartan Video USA
released = 2004 (South Korea)
runtime = 97 min.
language = Korean
imdb_id = 0397619
budget = $1,000,000 US
hangul = 사마리아
hanja = "(none)"
rr = "Samaria"
mr = "(none)"

"Samaritan Girl" ("Samaria") is a 2004 South Korean film written and directed by Kim Ki-duk.

Plot

Yeo-jin and Jae-yeong are two teenage girls who are trying to earn money for a trip to Europe. To reach this end, Jae-yeong is prostituting herself while Yeo-jin acts as her pimp, setting her up with the clients and staying on guard for the police. Things take a turn for the worse when Yeo-jin gets distracted from her duty and the police raid the motel where Jae-yeong is meeting with a client. To avoid getting caught, Jae-yeong jumps out of a window, fatally injuring herself.

After Jae-yeong's death, Yeo-jin blames herself and to ease her own conscience, sets to return all of the money they earned to the clients while sleeping with them herself. Eventually Yeo-jin's father, a policeman, is devastated when he discovers what she is doing. He starts following her discreetly and confronts her clients with escalatingly violent results. On the last time, he ends up brutally killing a client.

For the rest of its duration, the movie follows the father and daughter on a short trip to the countryside, where they both sense something is wrong with the other, but are unable to confront each other directly. In the end, the law catches up with the father, who hopes to have done enough to prepare Yeo-jin for her life without him.

Reception

As with many other films by Kim Ki-duk, "Samaritan Girl" was not a box office success in its home country, but was better received overseas. In the film's first large scale showing it won the Silver Bear, the second place award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004. After this, it became a sought after film for other international film festivalsref|1.

Main cast

*Kwak Ji-min - Yeo-jin
*Lee Eol - Yeong-ki (Yeo-jin's father)
*Han Yeo-reum - Jae-yeong (as Seo Min-jeong)

External links and references

*imdb title|id=0397619|title=Samaritan Girl
* [http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/films/feature_films_view.asp?films_num=13&page=1&p_part=2&p_item=Samaria Samaritan Girl at the Korean Film Council site]
* [http://www.koreanfilm.org/kfilm04.html#samaria Adam Hartzell's review at koreanfilm.org]