Teenage pregnancy, parental abandonment, abusive teachers, suicide: En Route To has all the hallmarks of a meaningful but potentially heavy-going indie social drama.
This even extends to its producer, the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), which excels in topical tales -- such as Bleak Night, Our Love Story and After My Death, no doubt in part due to the low average age of its first-time filmmakers.
Yet rather than wallow in its dark subject matter, this debut by Yoo Jae-in funnels its themes and form through humour and common sense. As knowing as it is entertaining, the film is unusually confident for a university feature: it knows what it wants to do and is in full control of the tools it needs to do so.
New face Sim Su-bin plays Yoon-ji, a first-year high school student who has fallen pregnant following her affair with her married homeroom teacher, who suddenly disappears without a word to his colleagues or his family.
Yoon-ji has always wanted a family, owing to the fact that she doesn't really have one of her own, yet she decides to get an abortion, thinking that her teacher might return if she does.
Withput medical consent forms or money for any legal procedures, Yoon-ji's plan is difficult and dangerous to enact. Her first course of action is to steal from her roommate Kyeong-seon (Lee Ji-won) to buy some dubious abortion pills.
Kyeong-seon, who has been saving money by illegally selling vape refill cartridges to classmates to fund a working holiday abroad, is initially apoplectic. But when she learns why Yoon-ji had to steal from her, she quickly changes and starts to help her.
Yet this isn't your typical story of female solidarity. While those also usually start with protagonists who at first seem misaligned, they typically continue with the characters gradually coming to understand that despite their differences, they really want the same thing.
En Route To's journey is far less straightforward. Kyeong-seon empathises with poor Yoon-ji, recognising her as someone who also lacks a proper social network, but the pregnant teen's actions and desires are mutable and difficult to pin down.
Adding a compelling layer to Yoon-ji's plight is the confused wife of her teacher -- played by Jang Sun, of last year's BIFF film Concerning My Daughter -- who barges into school to find her husband and later, after beginning an unusual relationship with Yoon-ji, seems to be even more discombobulated than the teen as she faces down an impossible home situation with bemused denial.
Among other things, this unexpected relationship between teenager and adult manages to unpack the meaning, expectations and realities of motherhood, without drubbing us with pat moralisations.
Yoo's film stands apart from its peers not just for its humour, which is plentiful and disarming, without ever cheapening the deeper implications of its story, but also for its fleet-footed pacing and editing. With its vivid cast and poignant themes, the film glides by, smoothly steering us through each of its emotional turns before attacking the next corner, en route to a destination of its own.