Director – Jang Man-min – 2024 – South Korea – Cert. 12 – 121m
***1/2
A Seoul woman in need of funds to buy a condo returns to her childhood coastal town to get the alimony payments her estranged father never stumped up – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025 which runs in cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th
Tormented by dreams set at night in which sometimes she herself and sometimes people she knows are vampires preying on others, which inspires her to draw a webtoon series, 32-year-old Kim Jung-seo (Na Ae-jin) has moved to Seoul and bought into the corporate dream, agreeing to split the cost of a condo, the right to buy for which she won on a lottery, with her fiancé Park Gyeong-hyun (Kang Bong-seong).
The only problem is, she has just been refused a permanent position at the graphic design company which employs her, so doesn’t have the money. So she resolves to visit her estranged father and pick up the alimony he never paid her mother Choi Mi-yeong (Park Hyun-sook) after their divorce. Jung-seo regularly visits the latter, who also lives in Seoul, whereas it’s been years since she was in the coastal town where her father lives with his new family.
When she returns there, following a ride from cabbie and old friend cabbie Hae-jeong (Park Mi-so), her fish restaurateur father Kim Yeong-joo (Ahn Seok-hwan) welcomes her with open arms. Moreover, she gets on well with half-sister Kim Jung-hae (Kim Jin-yeong), who dreams of writing songs much as Jung-seo dreamed of drawing webtoons in her younger days. Her father’s second wife Kyeong-ok (Yoon Seo-jung) seems more distant.
She also runs into a friendly woman who runs a rival fish restaurant, and becomes reacquainted with a lad she knew Tae-joon (Jo Ha-sung) who used to draw webtoons too, but instead joined the military because of the financial security and benefits.
Her dad promises to give her the money outstanding, but not until he’s met her boyfriend. Meanwhile, she helps out at the restaurant and bonds with her half sister. Yet, the more she sees of her father, the more she remembers why she left. He seems likeable enough until you try and get him to pay a debt; he is very good at both diversionary tactics and avoiding his responsibilities.
This all comes to a head when her boyfriend Gyeong-hyun finally arrives, and instead of paying his daughter the money as promised, her father instead takes the boy aside and tries to get him to sign off on a loan for proposed, larger restaurant premises. Her father is, and always has been, a pathological liar. And Jung-seo consequently has severe problems trusting anyone about anything.
You may find yourself wondering why the protagonist stays with her boyfriend when he suggests splitting the condo cost equally rather than paying more when his long term income is clearly more secure than hers.
A bigger problem is that the storytelling is not particularly economic, and in places the narrative outstays its welcome. When it’s good, it works as an effective character study exploring family dysfunction and manipulation. Ahn Seok-hwan is particularly effective as the duplicitous father completely blind to the errors of his ways.
Silver Apricot plays in LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025which runs in cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th.
FURTHER PROGRAMME INFORMATION:
Facebook: @theLKFF
Twitter: @koreanfilmfest
Instagram: @london_korean_film_festival
Homepage: https://www.koreanfilm.co.uk/
Trailer (LKFF 2025):