Big bad world

The feature film debut of Korean director Jae-eun Jeong is set in the port of Inch'on, where five girls are confronting the difficulties of moving from the giggly group loyalties of schooldays to the adult responsibilities of work.

The film is quiet, modest and very interesting - not least because it illustrates how alike the whole world is today when you're their age.

Ambitions, experience and disappointments pry the girls apart. Their separate family status is revealed. One is claimed by office life in a big brokerage firm, where a loss of her contact lenses exposes her to the ridicule of colleagues when she has to slip on spectacles.

Another is orphaned suddenly and put into an institution that resembles an American correctional facility, where even friends speak through glass partitions by telephone.

A pair of twins hit an amusing note in their identical responses to tragedy or comedy. And one girl develops her latent talents as an artist, but wonders if she will ever be appreciated.

It ends as many a "youth film" ends anywhere, West or East, with the decision to leave the place one has grown up in for the vast uncertainties of somewhere, anywhere else.

Passion isn't a quality many Koreans show, and the physiognomy of oriental faces, fragile but without Western interplay of features, causes you to pay closer attention to this view of an unfamiliar society than if it were one we knew. It shows the quality of life that passes under the surface is frequently stronger than any perceptible responses. Patience, therefore. Released 27 December.