Bedford Park
TIFF Film #4
Bedford Park feels almost like a rarity in cinema at the moment. It's interested in telling stories about ordinary working-class people. When this film reached its conclusion, it dawned on me how rarely we see stories like this, and yet how meaningful and ripe for showcasing they are.
The film is set against the backdrop of many a tragedy. However, none of them really become the focus of the film. It's simply a backdrop for the romantic drama to take place. In a way, the film is teeming with authenticity as these tragedies just feel like commonplace occurrences that these characters are forced to deal with. They're not sensationalised. They're real. These things happen.
It’s what makes the romance itself so magnetic and addicting is that amidst all of this dullness there is a pocket of light, and that being these two people connecting. It helps that the main actors, Moon Choi and Son Suk-ku, have a boundless amount of chemistry with each other. The film doesn't immediately present these two as falling deeply in love either. Their progression feels natural or as natural as a runtime like this would allow.
The pair of them feel like they're being pulled into each other's lives constantly. Their love feels magnetic. It is abrasive and destructive in moments, but there's still a connection that exists between them, and that's moving to watch.
Outside of this romance, there's wonderful individual work that's being done on these characters trying to find their authentic selves, specifically with the backdrop of being immigrants and the societal pressure that exists specifically for immigrants to have achieved something more than themselves, to have, quote unquote, done something with their lives. That pressure is placed on most working-class adults. But through the lens of the immigrant experience, this is only heightened. This idea that you're living for others, for your parents, to reward them for the struggles that they went through to give you this life that you have. It’s a burden that weighs heavily on both characters, how that informs their decisions, and then the shedding of these expectations when they're with each other is really wonderful to watch.
And the struggles that they are dealing with are so human, so ordinary. But the film manages to make these feel so grand and cinematic, dealing with how you're perceived at work, dealing with fractured families, the ambition to improve your life and get better, but the setbacks that can happen that can knock the wind out of your sails. All of it just felt so tenderly and beautifully realised.
There's a moment in the film where the characters are eating dinner and dancing, and one of the characters proclaims when did people stop going for dinner and dancing? And while I didn't love that line in the moment, I think it encapsulates what the film is trying to say, that perhaps we have lost the fact that life is meant to be enjoyed, that the hardships we face make us lose track of that, and how important it is to find your way back to it. Really loved this. Not everything works. Some scenes are a little drawn out and they don't quite bring a lot of value to the film, but overall, I think this is a wonderful piece.