Look! I promised to deliver a follow-up to my last post and I’m delivering! (If you knew how much trouble I have focusing on things you would probably appreciate my excitement more. Anyway!)

On Friday, March 18, I logged into Zoom, eager to finally be in focus on video calls thanks to my (much-needed) new webcam. Normally I reserve my Friday nights for a weekly trip to my friend’s place where we binge Survivor and Ru Paul’s Drag Race, but this Friday night I was more interested in sitting at my computer for an online Q&A panel with Hong Sung-eun, writer and director of Aloners, or 혼자 사는 사람들. After putting so much thought into the decisions she made throughout the film, I was really hoping to have some of my theories confirmed.

The pictures of Hong Sung-eun on Google do not do this lovely young woman justice. With bright eyes, a sweet smile, and the kind of soft voice that would make for a great audiobook narrator, Sung-eun was both 

charming and genuine as she answered our questions. She wore a bright knit sweater against an empty wall, speaking in an animated way about her debut feature-length film. Although I don’t speak Korean I could 

sense her intelligence in every word, and obviously as a fellow creative I could feel the rise in energy every time she started explaining something that had clearly made her proud. Needless to say I was captivated, 

and armed with a new notebook and a cyan fine-tip pen, I had a great time.

Before getting to the audience Q&A portion of the talk, the moderator asked our talented guest to speak a little about what inspired the film.

Hong Sung-eun explained that when someone lives alone, they typically face conflicting feelings about it. Yes, it can be liberating and relaxing; unfortunately it can also be lonely and isolating. It’s this sense of 

inner turmoil that Sung-eun wanted to express throughout the film, not only to examine the dichotomy of human desires but because she felt that audiences would relate to Jina as she tries to navigate her own 

version of these feelings.

Since Korea is, traditionally, a very community-oriented country where families (and sometimes mixed families) live together, the growing trend of young adults in their twenties and thirties who are striking 

out to live alone is a fascinating social evolution that’s been further and more quickly developing in recent years. Older generations may still find this whole lifestyle uncomfortable and empty; however, with 

each passing year more and more people are accepting the benefits of a home completely your own.

In keeping with the premise of being isolated from the rest of the world, a key aspect to Aloners is the fact that the audience only hears, sees, and feels the things that Jina does for the course of the entire movie.

At the beginning, the camera focuses mostly on our main character’s poker face, her phone screen— reflecting the way Jina keeps her eyes affixed to the device —or her work computer. The brilliant sound 

engineering works to amplify this effect, turning up the volume on what’s coming through her headphones and lowering the volume of the street noise and people around her. Voices are muffled and distant until

the audience sees her remove the earbuds. Hong Sung-eun explained she used this technique to explore how, even though the world around Jina isn’t actually changing, when she begins to acknowledge changes 

within herself around the film’s halfway mark, the world seems frightening and unfamiliar to her. Due to her previous inability (or perhaps refusal) to recognize there is in fact a living, breathing, noisy, and colorful 

city in which she exists, when she actually starts to come out of her waking coma, everything is overwhelming.

The first question regarded the significance of the noodle shop where Jina eats the same dish for lunch every day. I actually regretted that I hadn’t noticed the deliberate use of the setting.

Thank you so much for translating!

If you’ve seen Aloners, it would be very obvious once pointed out that the noodle shop is set up in a way to make it comfortable for people to eat alone. There are no tables, only single stools along what’s effectively 

a bar, so it wouldn’t be very welcoming for groups, or even just two people, as we see in the scene there with Sujin. Hong Sung-eun, in her lovely soft voice, explained that these types of restaurants do exist for real 

in Korea, and are actually so much geared towards people who want to eat alone, if you came with some friends and started talking too much, they would ask you to leave. Now, not only does the solitary nature of 

the noodle shop reflect Jina’s desire to be alone all the time, but the dish she eats there every day has a significance too: in a country full of colorful, flavorful food with infinite combinations, the main character 

chooses to eat the same bland dish every single day because she isn’t paying enough attention to notice, or care, what she was eating or that it was the same thing over and over. Trapped within the moment in time 

when her mom died, Jina goes through her life on autopilot, eating only because it’s part of her routine; the endless cycle of reliving the same day without the ability to move on.

On that note, Sung-eun clarified for us what ultimately kept Jina caged within her own mind was that she never properly learned how to say goodbye, and therefore couldn’t let go of anything.

Those of you who read my last blog post probably correctly guessed that I was brimming with questions for the writer/director who shares my birth year, but time flies when you’re having fun and I wanted everyone

else to have a fair chance at satisfying their curiosities too. An hour might sound like a long Q&A but honestly it seemed short once we got to the end! The point is, I only ended up asking two questions.

I don’t think I mentioned this in my interpretive analysis (because it was already insanely long) but there was one particular scene that stood out to me, that stayed burned in my mind like the lingering image on an 

old computer screen. Near what is arguably the film’s climax, Jina has an altercation with her father over the phone right outside his house, and after they hang up, she breaks down crying in the street right next to

where the trash has been put out. The shot of Jina curling up into a ball right next to the bags of garbage is powerful; even more so when she stays there for hours, if not all night. I couldn’t get that shot out of my 

mind. I needed to know what it represented, and so I asked exactly that.

First, Hong Sung-eun pointed out this moment as the first time that Jina actually acknowledges her mom’s death, having spent the entire movie unable and/or unwilling to change the number in her phone from “엄마”

 (mom) to “아버지” (father). Her extended breakdown is simply a result of the fragile walls she’d built around herself shattering to reveal reality. Second, the fresh-faced director revealed that the heart-wrenching 

climactic moment was in fact foreshadowed early in the film: the first time Jina goes to see her father to sign the legal paperwork, she walks past the same sidewalk where the trash is out. If you pay close attention, 

you can see there is an old framed photo of a mother and daughter along with some other tattered furniture among the trash bags, and if you pay really close attention, you’ll notice the location of the photo is almost

exactly the same place where Jina later falls down sobbing. Now THAT is some awesome symbolism.

Sung-eun is so charming when she explains things, I could listen to her talk all day.

My other question was really just asking for a confirmation of my interpretation on how she used color theory to express emotions in the movie. And the answer was mostly yes! Okay, so in some places I read a little

too much into things because I love to find meaning in everything, but overall Sung-eun did confirm that at the beginning she intentionally used cold, dead colors with low saturation to show the hopeless and

repetitive rut Jina faced every day. By the end of the movie she chose to put Jina in bright colors to establish without question that the character had indeed accepted her life and changed. Also, apparently blue tones

can be used to create a surreal feeling on film, and Sung-eun used this technique for all the scenes in the outer hall.

Someone else asked what kind of projects this budding director would look to accomplish in the future, but— ever modest and humble —she replied that since she was so fresh out of film school, she couldn’t speak

to her goals just yet. On the plus side she did tell us we may see a science-fiction film in the near future!

Thank you everyone involved!

Once again, a huge thank you to the International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO) and the Korean Cultural Centre Canada for making this special event possible, and an extra gigantic thank you to the young woman who translated the panel for us (this is especially embarrassing because I know I know her name, but I have a horrible memory for everything except song lyrics, so I hope she’ll forgive me this time). Maybe one day Hong Sung-eun will even visit Ottawa for a film festival! Until then I’ll keep attending the events put on by the KCC and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea.