Oscar nominated’Buttercup’ Yoon Yeo-jung “Why enter the US? To see my son”

Actor Yoon Yeo-jeong poses for an interview at a cafe in Samcheong-dong when she starred in the 2012 movie’The Taste of Money’. Hyukjae Kwon Photo Reporter

“You have experience living in the United States. I saw it. My friend’s mother (who is internationally married) comes to (to America) and spends the night with her grandson. My friend’s husband is Irish (Irish descent), so I was very surprised. Why do you bite the chestnut and spit it on a spoon for a healthy child or a child with all teeth? That’s why your country has a lot of hepatitis.”

In the movie’Minari’ (released on the 3rd), actor Yoon Yeo-jeong (74), who played Sunja, a Korean grandmother who visited her daughter Monica (Han Ye-ri), who immigrated to the United States, bites the boiled night to his young grandson David (Alan Kim). It is an inspirational experience. This family film, which was written by director Isak Jeong (Lee Isaac Jeong), the second generation of Korean Americans, and the autobiographical immigration history of moving to rural Arkansas in the 1980s to open a Korean vegetable farm, is the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film Award and the Sundance Film Festival Jury Awards and Attendance Awards. So far, it has won 90 film award trophies both inside and outside the United States.
Among them, 32 are the Best Supporting Actress Awards presented to Yoon Yeo-jung by the LA, Washington DC, Boston, and San Francisco Critics Association. The New Mexico Critics Association, Middleburg Film Festival, International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA), and Detroit Critics Association ensemble awards were separately awarded. He was nominated for the first Korean Supporting Actor Award at the American Actors Guild (SAG) award, which Hollywood actors directly select. Local media such as Indie Wire and The New York Times (NYT) are highly likely to be selected as the first Korean actor to be nominated for the 93rd Academy Award, which will be announced on the 15th prior to the awards ceremony next month. If it wins, it is the second time in Asian history after Japanese actor Miyoshi Umeki in Sayonara (1957).

Thanks to this topic, in Korea, 440,000 viewers for the 11th day of its release, bringing a spring breeze to the Corona 19 theater district. There is also a reaction that is more boring than expected, while the favorable comments that the family thought they were bleak are dominant. In the United States, it is an extremely American immigrant family film that embraces the American dream, and it is a movie that reminds me of family love amidst the direct hit from Corona 19, it is attracting more attention. In particular, the popularity of the young grandson wearing cowboy boots and the Korean grandmother Sun-ja, who transcends generational and cultural differences, are very popular.

The film, in which Director Jung said, “It was the intention not to explain my identity as an Asian American (for the white audience),” is’Minari’, a Korean translation of the English title as it is. Sunja is a character that looks like a Buttercup’s alter ego. He led the hand of his weak-hearted grandson and planted the water parsley seeds brought from Korea in the deep forests of Arkansas, saying, “Water parsley grows well anywhere. Buttercup sings the song “wonderful”.

Director Jung is a “smells like Korea” grandmother to his grandson David, who projected himself as a child. In Korea, she brings red pepper powder and dried anchovies that her daughter likes, but she does not cook. David, who is weak in heart, even hunsu to a white boy he had dated at church, and’winning over’ Hwatu is also Sunja’s special discipline. But only by the end of the movie do you realize that these laughable moments of memories have been a strong protective shield for your family.

To his grandson David (Alan Kim), who was born and raised in the United States, Sunja is a grandmother who is not like a real grandmother. I enjoy watching wrestling while sipping “Dew Water from the Mountain” (the family calls “Mountain Dew”, an American drink like this). [사진 판씨네마]

After planting seeds, water parsley does not grow in the first year, but after purifying the surrounding soil, it is like a water parsley that grows green from the following year. In the play, Sunja is a healing character resembling a water parsley to her family. [사진 판씨네마]

Yoon Yeo-jeong, who played all these meanings as a grandmother character with a foot on the ground, has great power. When asked if I should imitate Jung’s grandmother, Director Jung said, “Do whatever you want with the teacher.”

Director Jung, who wrote the script, remembering his maternal grandmother, who was actually a widow of the Korean War, met Yoon Yeo-jung at the Pusan ​​Film Festival while teaching films at the University of Utah’s Songdo campus and cast him. “It made them feel uncomfortable with nasty words, but in the end, it was perfect for a very honest and unhesitating role in making them feel and like Grandma’s love,” he said. [사진 판씨네마]

In an English interview with the LA Times last month, he even raised his great-grandmother as a model of a son who was different from his actual appearance. “My great-grandmother was alive when I was ten, but at that time I didn’t like her at all.” “Grandmother gave her life for us during the Korean War. As a child, I didn’t understand the situation at all, so after the war, I thought it was dirty to wash with the same water again and again to save water because of lack of water. I was really stupid and I still broke my heart.”

As a result, Yoon Yeo-jeong even got the nickname “Korea’s Meryl Streep” (Good Morning America) as a role of “Lovely and Mouthful” (LA Times) “Shin Stealer” (USA Today). Film media Indiewire ranked Yoon Yeo-jung as the 13 best female actors last year and praised it as “Yoon Yeo-jung’s acting makes everything believable.” ‘Parasite’ actor Choi Woo-sik and’Yoon Stay’ (tvN) starred in recent active TV entertainment moves, from the beginning of their debut to the actor’s career.

Nam Gung-won and Yoon Yeo-jung, who starred from left in the 1971 movie ‘Hwa-nyeo’ by Kim Ki-young. [중앙포토]

In fact, among Korean audiences,’Minari’, which is highly praised in the United States,’isn’t Yoon Yeo-jung the best acting ever?’ Some may be confused. He debuted in 1966 when he was in the first year of Hanyang University’s Korean Literature department, and passed the TBC TV Talent Bond, and has been for 56 years. In 1967, he won the Rookie Talent Award for the drama’Mr. Bear’ and rose to stardom with his strong personality and tone. In the drama’Jang Hee-bin’, which starred in the drama’Jang Hee-bin’ after moving to MBC in 71, the viewers who were angry with Jang Hee-bin’s dexterity were torn the poster photos on the street.

The screen debut film is’Hwa-nyeo’ by director Kim Ki-young, who appeared in the same year. Director Kim reinterprets his representative black and white film’The Maid’ (1960) in color. She became an affair with a married man in the house where she was a mother-in-law, and created a thriller caught in madness, winning the Best Actress and Grand Bell Awards at the Sitges International Film Festival. Married to singer Cho Young-nam in 1974 and left for the United States, he seemed to retire in effect, but returned to Korea 13 years after divorce. Recently, in the LA Times, he put an end to a marriage that “learned how to bake cookies and devoted himself to being a housewife and mother”, and had to work as a supermarket cashier at least $2.75 an hour for a living to raise two young children sent to public school. I remembered it as a time of hardship.

Is it because of such urgency? When I came back to Korea, I jumped into the work more vigorously than before. In dramas such as “Love and Ambition,” “Sandseong”, “Wonmi-dong People”, “Goodbye”, “Bathhouse Men,” and “You Rolled Up in the Vine,” mainly women who have melted in the times were played. The film theory’Too Sang-soo’ met director Sang-soo Im and Hong Sang-soo and opened a new era with’Sen Character’. Following the “Family Families”, which played the mother-in-law who was late with her dying husband, followed by “The Maid,” who reinterpreted the film of the same name by Kim Ki-young and played as an old maid, Dae Jong Award, Chunsa Film Awards, Korean Film Awards, Cinematella Film Festival, The 2010 Asian Film Awards and other Best Supporting Actress awards were wiped out.

In the movie’Taste of Money’, when her husband declared that he would make the last love of his life with a Filipino maid, his wife, Geum-Ok Yoon (Yoon Yeo-jung) was angry. [사진 시너지하우스, 롯데엔터테인먼트]

In the same year, he was invited to the Cannes Film Festival for two films as’Hahaha’ and’The Maid’, who worked with director Hong that year. Two years later, director Im’s’Taste of Money’, where he became the hostess of a conglomerate who covets a young man (Kim Kang-woo) two years later, and Hong’s’From Another Country’ with French actor Isabellewiper, were in the Cannes competition category. They were invited side by side and repeated again. In 2016, director Lee Jae-yong’s’The Killer Woman’, who played Bacchus grandmother, who is dying of an alienated life, won the Cheval Noir Competition-Actress Award at the Canadian Fantasia Film Festival. Although he was awarded the Eungwan Culture Medal four years ago for his contributions to the Korean culture and arts community, this is the first time he has received such attention in the United States, where the world’s film industry is drawing attention.

Yoon Yeo-jung, who had already matched with Bae Doo-na and English ambassadors in the Netflix drama’Sense 8’by the sister director of Washowski, is also an English work. Korean-American writer Lee Min-jin’s Apple TV American drama’Pachinko’ took on a new challenge. The film’Heaven: To the Land of Happiness’ (tentative title) by director Im Sang-soo, which was included in the official selection of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, is also awaiting release. The Oscars have been told that it feels like a distant story. “I just talked with a friend about why I keep returning to the US and why I am interested in overseas projects.” In an interview with the LA Times, he added, “Probably because my sons are Korean-Americans and live in the United States, and I will be able to see them once more.”

‘Minari’, which director Isak Jeong called “a love letter to all parents in the world who put their hopes on for the future of their children.” “Water parsley means love between families. Director Jung’s explanation, who said that his tough vitality and adaptability resembled our family, was another aspect of the life that actor Yoon Yeo-jung had embraced.

Reporter Na Won-jeong [email protected]