Four teenage outcasts team up to save the animals in the quirky and quietly metaphorical The Gorals.
This second film from Yoo Jae-wook, the co-director of Limecrime, another tale of teens on the fringe, recalls several indie films about young girls who explore the world outside of their schools, such as The World of Us, Snowball and Short Vacation.
High school teenager In-hye is cleaning up her school's animal pen when she is approached by Seo-hee, who doesn't know her, with instructions to visit their guidance counsellor. She is also told to tell Jung-ae from another class to do the same thing. All three of them visit yet another girl, Su-min, and then this awkward quartet appear in front of the teacher.
They have been gathered because they submitted blank college application forms. The teacher is concerned about their futures and wants them all to work together until they sort out their futures. The girls don't have much social contact at school, save for In-hye, who is having a secret relationship with a boy who is running to be class president.
In-hye's boyfriend is from a well-to-do family and seems reluctant, perhaps even ashamed, to reveal his relationship with In-hye, who comes from a poor family. He even uses her and her family to get a leg up in his election campaign, shooting a video at his parents' small restaurant, which claims that the school is knowingly using "dirty" meat in cafeteria food. An emblem of what society tries to turn us into, he keeps trying to dissuade In-hye from her pursuits, without ever showing any interest in who she is.
At first, the girls don't interact much, but that slowly changes after the school decides to shut down the animal enclosure. In-hye wants to save their fluffy and furry friends and convinces Seo-hee to help her. Eventually the other girls join them as they trek out to the forest where they make a new enclosure to protect the animals.
Together, they call themselves the "Gorals", a hardy Asian species of goat that lives out on steep hills in the wilderness. The metaphor extends to a brief road trip the girls take, during which they hike up a mountain, seeking to escape several dangers.
While their guidance counsellor correctly identifies that these four girls need some direction in their lives, she makes little effort to identify the different personal circumstances that have led to them being adrift. They are told to study and go to good schools, but never why that's important. The guidance counsellor steadily disappears from the story. Whether by design or owing to a lack of characterisation, she becomes symbolic of a faceless or uncaring system.
Ultimately the girls' differences are what bind them together -- they don't fit in and they need some sense of community, whether they recognise it or not. Their desire to relocate the enclosure mirrors their own predicaments, which is surely why they become so obsessed with the project, at the expense of their schooling -- that, and their concern for the cute ducks and rabbits.
The overarching objective of The Gorals is a clear one and there are compelling moments in the girls' journey. The film favours a cute and zany approach for its adorable animals and oddball teens while the pacing and plotting are fairly easygoing. This leads to the occasional mismatch of theme and tone, as the film treats its subject a bit too lightly. With the febrile emotions of youth muted, the trials of the Gorals are somewhat lacking in tension.
However, the film isn't shy about relying on the emotional screen power of animals in danger, which is particularly pronounced in the final act. Other times, the script prods unclearly at our emotions, such as a jarring early scene in which In-hye brings Seo-hee out to the forest, who at first wants to decapitate the duck they've brought with them with her switchblade.
Yoon Ga-eun inspired a generation of filmmakers with The World of Us, a film whose simplicity and ordinary characters belied a rich and poetic tale softly delving into internalised emotions.
By contrast, the pleasant and twee The Gorals presents pretty unique characters but given their mild affections and lack of depth, it's hard to say how authentic they are. Yoo has a fixed frame, built from different themes -- including Jung-ae's multiracial family -- but the brushstrokes on the canvas, while colourful, feel a bit light.