Helpless

Previously best known for her docs on the Korean "comfort women" prostituted in the Pacific War, Byun Youngjoo here adapts a celebrated mystery-thriller novel by Miyabe Miyuki and does it proud. (The book is titled Kasha/Burning Train; it was translated into English as All She Was Worth.) Likable young veterinarian Munho is driving his fiancée Seonyeong to meet his stern father when she abruptly disappears at a motorway rest stop. The only trace is a hairpin on the floor of the restroom. Munho later finds her apartment ransacked and feels sure she’s been kidnapped. The police are no help, so he persuades his "difficult" cousin Jonggeun (a former cop who left the force under a cloud) to investigate. But the closer they get to the missing woman, the more elusive she becomes. They find themselves rethinking old deaths as possible murders, wading through financial scams and, eventually, approaching some horrifying conclusions. Byun’s hard-edged feminism shines through the snaking plot: this is ultimately the story of a victimized woman. But it gets all the male stuff right too.

— Tony Rayns