Incomplete Woman by Huh Su-young

incomplete Woman by Huh Su-young is a police genre-like animation short, selected for International Competition at the 2021 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. Kaye H. Lee, editor of Seoul & Animator, reviews the animation short.

One day, the dismembered body of a woman was found. Except her lower body and the left hand, other body parts were disappeared without a trace and no evidence of any intrusion.
So her lower body and the left hand take the road in search of others that had left for the reason they hated each other so much - Film Synopsis

The wide-open doorway is blocked by a yellow police line. Spectators crowd around and peek inside. The investigator with the camera is recording the evidence in the crime scene. There’s a desk, a bed, and a dismembered body. All that remains are the leg and the left hand. The investigator confirms the identity of the body, and the mother answers with a stifled voice. Kim Bok-soon stayed locked up in her room to study for an important exam, one that she had already failed five times. Just then, the left hand on the floor scrambles up to the top of the desk and writes in a notebook. Bok-soon is actually right-handed, so the left hand scrawls words in messy handwriting. The left hand gives a statement that says this was not foul play but rather a simple case of a runaway.

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The left hand finds a clue while reading an online article and, together with the legs, tracks down the other body parts. Arriving in the middle of a field of tall reeds, they find the feet inside a circle taped off by a police line. After being homeless for some time, their toenails are jagged and overgrown. On their way back In the next scene, the tension increases as a young man’s head lying on a bed says to them: “My life is a failure, so it’s fitting that I live like garbage.” The young man’s torso lies in pieces on the floor. The kidnapper is his elderly mother who wants to make her son whole again. As the mother and son begin to quarrel, the left hand and the legs slip out of the pants which are bound by tape and make their escape. When they go to the police station to file a report, they are reunited with the runaway head. Upon leaving the police station, the body parts go to the test-taking site. Soon, the right arm and the rest of the body arrive. After a day, Kim Bok-soon’s body has been reunited. She is whole again and enters the test-taking site, though the legs are only wearing underwear.

In a world where your head can fall off after a sneeze but walking around in your underwear makes you look crazy, heartbroken young people give up on their bodies, but Bok-soon’s left hand, right arm, torso and legs each chart their own future. After hearing a plan that is peaceful, realistic, and even ambitious, the head doesn’t accept it and leaves once again. This is how the story ends. The head and the body never reconcile, reunite, or make a renewed effort at life.

In Huh Su-young’s previous film One Plus One (2015), the main character Doona practices a dance that she dislikes to help with her job hunt, but Kim Bok-soon from Incomplete Woman has lost the will to reverse her repeated failures. Huh Su-young’s world is as cold as always, and her character is perverse. Huh has become more adept in her use of sharp dialogue spat out with indifference and miserable situations wrapped in dark humor. She shows us a dismembered body that is falling to pieces and asks us how long we will turn a blind eye to the crimes we are witnessing.The wide-open doorway is blocked by a yellow police line. Spectators crowd around and peek inside.

The investigator with the camera is recording the evidence in thecrime scene. There’s a desk, a bed, and a dismembered body. All that remains are the leg and the left hand. The investigator confirms the identity of the body, and the mother answers with a stifled voice. Kim Bok-soon stayed locked up in her room to study for an important exam, one that she had already failed five times. Just then, the left hand on the floor scrambles up to the top of the desk and writes in a notebook. Bok-soon is actually right-handed, so the left hand scrawls words in messy handwriting. The left hand gives a statement that says this was not foul play but rather a simple case of a runaway.

The left hand finds a clue while reading an online article and, together with the legs, tracks down the other body parts. Arriving in the middle of a field of tall reeds, they find the feet inside a circle taped off by a police line. After being homeless for some time, their toenails are jagged and overgrown. On their way back In the next scene, the tension increases as a young man’s head lying on a bed says to them: “My life is a failure, so it’s fitting that I live like garbage.” The young man’s torso lies in pieces on the floor. The kidnapper is his elderly mother who wants to make her son whole again. As the mother and son begin to quarrel, the left hand and the legs slip out of the pants which are bound by tape and make their escape.

When they go to the police station to file a report, they are reunited with the runaway head. Upon leaving the police station, the body parts go to the test-taking site. Soon, the right arm and the rest of the body arrive. After a day, Kim Bok-soon’s body has been reunited. She is whole again and enters the test-taking site, though the legs are only wearing underwear.

In a world where your head can fall off after a sneeze but walking around in your underwear makes you look crazy, heartbroken young people give up on their bodies, but Bok-soon’s left hand, right arm, torso and legs each chart their own future. After hearing a plan that is peaceful, realistic, and even ambitious, the head doesn’t accept it and leaves once again. This is how the story ends. The head and the body never reconcile, reunite, or make a renewed effort at life.

In Huh Su-young’s previous film One Plus One (2015), the main character Doona practices a dance that she dislikes to help with her job hunt, but Kim Bok-soon from Incomplete Woman has lost the will to reverse her repeated failures. Huh Su-young’s world is as cold as always, and her character is perverse. Huh has become more adept in her use of sharp dialogue spat out with indifference and miserable situations wrapped in dark humor. She shows us a dismembered body that is falling to pieces and asks us how long we will turn a blind eye to the crimes we are witnessing.

contributed by: Kaye H. Lee

Credits:
Incomplete Woman (Korea, 2020, 10'05'')

Director-Producer-Script: Huh Su-young | Animation: JANG Hee-sik, YEO Eun-a, KIM Ji-hyeon | BG/Layout/Character: Huh Su-young | Editing: Huh Su-young | Sound designer: MixCamp | Voice: KIM Hari, LEE Seong-gyeong, HA Ji-ung, JANG Hee-sik

About Huh Su-young:
She was born in 1988 in Young-ju, South Korea. She graduated (2012) from Hanyang University of Multimedia design, and from KAFA(Korea Academy of Film Arts) of Animation (2015).

The article benefited from the help of Korea Independent Animation Filmmakers Association (KIAFA).