The FVC is proud to screen Never Forever, co-produced by FVC Director Kyung Hyun Kim and written and directed by Gina Kim. The film was one of the dramatic competition films at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Sophie (Vera Farmiga, star of the Oscar-winning The Departed) seems to have an idyllic life; she's the perfect Caucasian housewife for Andrew (David L. Mcinnis), her successful Asian American husband. Their relationship is put to the test, though, when she can't conceive a child. To save her marriage, Sophie does something desperate. She initiates a bold and clandestine venture with Jihah (Jung-woo Ha), an illegal immigrant from Korea. Sophie soon finds this new arrangement spiraling into a situation that may actually destroy what it was meant to liberate.

In Never Forever, writer/director Gina Kim arranges every shot with a calculating eye, building a step-by-step urgency. Her story is rich and her filmmaking lean and precise. Kim creates the perfect tone, right down to a climate of extreme repression where the sexual energy is nearly combustible. The insightful art direction and costume design are marvelously refined for an independent film. And Vera Farmiga's incredible performance as Sophie is a true gift. Her ethereal beauty--crystal blue eyes and porcelain skin--gives her the appearance of a rare doll, which isn't too far from the pampered existence she represents. As the perfect counterpart to two gifted leading men, her mastery of Sophie's gradual transformation makes Never Forever an unforgettable cinematic experience.
— John Cooper, Director of Programming, Sundance Film Festival

Gina Kim's works have generated critical acclaim in recent years. Cahiers du Cinema has called Invisible Light, "…the only truly radical discovery in a landscape [of recent Korean cinema]," that depicts "…feminine hardness and repressed anger." Film Comment wrote that, "Kim has a terrific eye, a gift for near-wordless storytelling, a knack for generating a tense gliding rhythm between images and sounds, shots and scenes, and for yielding a quality of radiance in her actors." Kim also teaches film production and film studies classes at Harvard University in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department.

Directed by Gina Kim. 2007, South Korea/USA • 104 minutes • 35mm

Co-sponsored by the Organizing Committee for the
Graduate Student Conference in Comparative Literature
UC Irvine, April 6-7

and

Korean Cultural Center of Los Angeles
Korean Film Council