‘The World Before’ Festival Review: A Tender Portrait of Adolescence and First Love

Summer romances may be one of cinema’s oldest plots, but when a film manages to capture its characters’ feelings with enough precision, the results can be extraordinary. The World Before is exactly that: a very good Korean drama about two teenagers going through a season in which they begin to connect in a more intimate, tentative way, a brief stretch of time that usually comes to an end, leaving behind memories and perhaps a lesson or two. The familiar coming-of-age movie.

Everything takes place in a small, idyllic village on a Korean island. Jin (Sim Su-bin), a 17-year-old girl — though she looks younger — lives there with her family. She has grown close to an elderly neighbor whom she often keeps company. When the woman dies, her grandson Dujae (Kim Eo-jin) returns to the village from the city where he lives to attend her funeral and spend some time with his family. Jin and Dujae have known each other since childhood, but they haven’t seen each other in years. They are clearly no longer children. And their relationship begins to take on the possibility of something else.

At least that’s how Jin sees it. Director Yoon Dan-bi stays much closer to her inner world, giving her the point of view around which the film is organized. Dujae always seems a little more distant, or simply less aware of any kind of connection beyond friendship, and for a while that isn’t a problem. The two move around the island like the friends they have always been: riding bikes, dropping by each other’s homes, going to the beach and so on. But before long Jin starts getting jealous of the girls who show an interest in him, and she isn’t quite sure how to let him know that she wants something more. Maybe he wants that, too. Who knows? That uncertainty is part of the mystery that troubles her.

The World Before touches on other issues that come with being that age — their parents, family tensions and things of that sort — but its main focus is the relationship itself, the possibility of romance, and the peaceful, beautiful setting in which their story unfolds. Yoon Dan-bi takes her time painting this portrait of a place and a particular moment. This isn’t a film driven by plot twists or complicated situations. Its conflicts are simple and straightforward, and perhaps all the more affecting for that.

For the rest of its running time — 115 minutes that could probably stand to be a little shorter but nevertheless flow with considerable naturalness — the director of Moving On tries to capture the essence of a moment defined by freedom, fear, intense emotions and conflicts that, at least then, can feel like matters of life and death. Every so often, the film incorporates readings from the diaries the elderly woman left behind. These little haikus, these reflections on life and the passage of time, gradually sink in, affecting not only the protagonists but the audience as well.

The World Before is formally classical, closer to the way Japanese cinema approaches this kind of portrait of adolescence than to the Korean tradition, with tender music running throughout and images of a small seaside village where houses and doors are left open, alongside beaches, bicycles and inner conflicts that aren’t immediately visible. Jin has them, and we will come to know them. Dujae does, too. By the time this story ends, both will be different people. Maybe not quite adults yet, but certainly closer to becoming them.