Juhee, a drama professor who wants to quit teaching after this semester, finds out that she has a tumor suspected of malignancy in her chest after a medical examination. She is sure it’s cancer. She once dreamed of becoming a good actor and a good teacher. But now she’s tired of everything. She goes to her office to set her affairs, and some of her students come to her office and want to talk to her. Ho-jin, the director of a theater company, is busy preparing for a play ahead of its premiere. There is a scene where he is not sure if it’s the right way of directing, and it bothers him. Young members of the theater company whisper and gossip that Ho-jin’s play about the middle-aged couple’s crisis may be his own story.

The start of the film was to move the background of Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 from the streets of Paris in 1962 to a cinematic chamber play in 2022. Cléo, an actor in her twenties who wandered through the streets of Paris, was transformed into a middle-aged Juhee in her forties who wanted to change the direction of her life. The only thing left for her, who stopped her career as an actor and has been a teacher for the last 10 years, is a tired mind and a sick body. And here is Ho-jin, the director who is struggling to lead an old theater company. His stubbornness, which is like a relic of the past century, is far from the stream of times. He put his own story of the crisis with his wife Juhee into his play. It sounds like Ho-jin’s excuse, or the last letter to Juhee. I’d like to share the story with those who don’t know where to start when their sincerely cultivated lives have been denied and their overconfident bodies have become sick.

2022 Busan International Film Festival