Aloners swiftly enchants its viewers with quiet and simple images that slowly build up the solitude of our protagonist. Ji-na isn't per se lonely, she might not even be unhappy, she simply chose to be alone, wafting through the weeks with single lunches and the ever-accompanying noise of technology. When a few encounters threaten to unravel her solitude she is forced to face her past, present and future. Hong Sung-eun's debut is so tender and warm and struck a deep cord within me. The way she uses the camera to portray Ji-Na's life, always focused, always following the same movements, never shattering to slowly making the young woman re-experience her surroundings is incredibly powerful. I especially appreciated Gong Seung-yeon's delicate performance as well as the script's refusal to make its aloners a bad thing - there can be comfort in being alone, and there might be a different comfort in finally connecting with people and life again. Absolutely incredible!
12 Reviews
solitude
MikeyB179323 July 2023
A young girl works at a call-in centre for a credit card company. Aside from greeting customers and looking at her cellphone constantly, she hasn't much of a social life. She is a misanthrope, avoiding any human interaction. When she is forced to have a trainee she is rude and abrupt to her.
All this is well done by the main actress (Jeong Da-eun) and she certainly can't be accused of over-acting. The film is also sprinkled with humour, which alleviates the atmosphere and prevents the film from being overly world-weary.
Obviously the purpose is to demonstrate the alienation and loneliness of young people in today's' world - yet hasn't this been a perennial problem - listen to some of the folk music from the 1960s.
All this is well done by the main actress (Jeong Da-eun) and she certainly can't be accused of over-acting. The film is also sprinkled with humour, which alleviates the atmosphere and prevents the film from being overly world-weary.
Obviously the purpose is to demonstrate the alienation and loneliness of young people in today's' world - yet hasn't this been a perennial problem - listen to some of the folk music from the 1960s.
A Reflection on Capitalism and the Working Class
thalassafischer20 August 2023
I am really surprised - though honestly not shocked - that more people don't note that the glaring truth of this film is that it's about the invasion of Western capitalism in South Korea. The more SK has Westernized, the more its people have the same problems as anyone stuck in a capitalist grind.
The main character is basically a robot who takes abuse constantly in her job as a customer service agent who answers phones for a credit card company. She handles every call with rational detachment and feigned politeness, obeying the commands of rude and irrational customers who don't see her as a person.
Jina's plight is further complicated by her bottled up grief over the death of her mother. It takes the death of a neighbor, who appears to her as a ghost, and a young, needy trainee at work to reach into Jina's solitary world of work and television.
The main character is basically a robot who takes abuse constantly in her job as a customer service agent who answers phones for a credit card company. She handles every call with rational detachment and feigned politeness, obeying the commands of rude and irrational customers who don't see her as a person.
Jina's plight is further complicated by her bottled up grief over the death of her mother. It takes the death of a neighbor, who appears to her as a ghost, and a young, needy trainee at work to reach into Jina's solitary world of work and television.
if only....
BlissQuest6 September 2022
This is a review for those who, like me, like to come back here after watching a film, just to see if anyone else shared their concluding thoughts. Thought there are no spoilers, this short review will only resonate with those who have already seen the film.
The director/writer felt the need to insert a few completely uneccessary and very implausible events into the plot, which almost spoiled what should have been a quite good viewing experience. Not sure if the "uneccesaries" were derived from cultural humor or whimsical creativity. Once again, without giving anything away, the silly implausibles were: the magazine death; the hidden camera confession; the restaurant seating incident.
The director/writer felt the need to insert a few completely uneccessary and very implausible events into the plot, which almost spoiled what should have been a quite good viewing experience. Not sure if the "uneccesaries" were derived from cultural humor or whimsical creativity. Once again, without giving anything away, the silly implausibles were: the magazine death; the hidden camera confession; the restaurant seating incident.
Working Life at a Supernatural Aspect
BornKnight13 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
A 25% mixture of drama, 25% of psychological thriller and 50% of sobrenatural story. Korea already established itself as a country that know how to make good movies with good stories. While this one have characteristics not too well know in the west - aka people that lives a so lonely live because of work, distancing themselves from even their parents - it shows a reality into a strange form to most of us of the western countries. The directress is Hong Sung-eun which had before some small success movies inside South Korea.
The basic premise is a hard working CC call-center girls that lives a lonely life, not knowing even her neighbors. She have a distant life from their parents whom she talks by the way of a phone and a remote camera circuit, watching the daily life of her dad and her sick mother.
Everything changes when along while receiving the duty of train a new recruit for her workplace (that means that she must have close connections to teach the work), she learns that the neighbor she saw smoking outside his apartment have died before she saw him, by suicide. Enter the supernatural element on the movie. To worse things even more her mother dies too.
From here the movie lost some of the impact and discussion - we can resume that after all this she learns that she can have a live, she must have a live to not become a drone, but not much changes other than the closing relation with her father and depart of the new girl. She gets a new neighbor, that shares the same smoking patterns and talks of her deceased neighbor, and even she starts to take them.
I don't know if it is the culture gap that made me lose the interest on the scrip (I am sure of it), but I found it a bit previsible and it could be worked a bit more. It is a movie than is well done but more oriented to oriental culture or workaholics. A 7,0 out of 10,0 / B score.
The basic premise is a hard working CC call-center girls that lives a lonely life, not knowing even her neighbors. She have a distant life from their parents whom she talks by the way of a phone and a remote camera circuit, watching the daily life of her dad and her sick mother.
Everything changes when along while receiving the duty of train a new recruit for her workplace (that means that she must have close connections to teach the work), she learns that the neighbor she saw smoking outside his apartment have died before she saw him, by suicide. Enter the supernatural element on the movie. To worse things even more her mother dies too.
From here the movie lost some of the impact and discussion - we can resume that after all this she learns that she can have a live, she must have a live to not become a drone, but not much changes other than the closing relation with her father and depart of the new girl. She gets a new neighbor, that shares the same smoking patterns and talks of her deceased neighbor, and even she starts to take them.
I don't know if it is the culture gap that made me lose the interest on the scrip (I am sure of it), but I found it a bit previsible and it could be worked a bit more. It is a movie than is well done but more oriented to oriental culture or workaholics. A 7,0 out of 10,0 / B score.
A film about einzelgängers
smonster004 July 2021
Jinah is an einzelgänger, someone who really prefers to be alone over socializing with others. She has her reasons and slowly begins to feel the angst of loneliness after her neighbor suddenly dies in the film Aloners.
This movie is very realistic and sometimes feels more like a documentary and abstract commentary on the daily lives of some people who are considered loners.
This movie is very realistic and sometimes feels more like a documentary and abstract commentary on the daily lives of some people who are considered loners.
With the force of subtlety
danybur24 July 2022
Summary
Notable directorial debut by the Korean Hong Sung-eun, which exposes with a subtlety as extraordinary as it is forceful the crisis of a young woman who chose solitude as a way of life.
Review
A young woman leads a solitary existence until certain events begin to question that way of life.
Jina (or Jin-ah) works in a credit card customer service call center. She is a holojok, a term that defines in South Korea people who live alone in cities, without relatives, partners or friends. She avoids as much as possible any contact and verbal communication, unless it is unavoidable. The film recounts how certain circumstances begin to crack this emotional strength: the reunion with her father, being forced to train a new employee, the death of a neighbor, circumstances that force her to socialize and that in some cases constitute an uncomfortable mirror.
Hong Sung-eun's remarkable debut feature exposes with extraordinary subtlety what Jina is feeling (she is not the only lonely one in the story), in front of that game of mirrors that speak to her of her present and perhaps of her future and those interactions who lives as intrusions in his world dominated by efficient and dispassionate work and permanent connection to screens. The story is not content with sticking to the drama, but rather adds some disturbing elements and few but accurate touches of humor, creating a climate that captures the viewer. And always with what I call the "elegance" of South Korean fiction.
All of this could not work without the extraordinary performance of Gong Seung-yeon as Jina, who owns a mask of infinite shades that perfectly describe what she expresses and suggest what she hides.
Notable directorial debut by the Korean Hong Sung-eun, which exposes with a subtlety as extraordinary as it is forceful the crisis of a young woman who chose solitude as a way of life.
Review
A young woman leads a solitary existence until certain events begin to question that way of life.
Jina (or Jin-ah) works in a credit card customer service call center. She is a holojok, a term that defines in South Korea people who live alone in cities, without relatives, partners or friends. She avoids as much as possible any contact and verbal communication, unless it is unavoidable. The film recounts how certain circumstances begin to crack this emotional strength: the reunion with her father, being forced to train a new employee, the death of a neighbor, circumstances that force her to socialize and that in some cases constitute an uncomfortable mirror.
Hong Sung-eun's remarkable debut feature exposes with extraordinary subtlety what Jina is feeling (she is not the only lonely one in the story), in front of that game of mirrors that speak to her of her present and perhaps of her future and those interactions who lives as intrusions in his world dominated by efficient and dispassionate work and permanent connection to screens. The story is not content with sticking to the drama, but rather adds some disturbing elements and few but accurate touches of humor, creating a climate that captures the viewer. And always with what I call the "elegance" of South Korean fiction.
All of this could not work without the extraordinary performance of Gong Seung-yeon as Jina, who owns a mask of infinite shades that perfectly describe what she expresses and suggest what she hides.
Show don't tell
anon-1596427 November 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This movie about young working Koreans who are isolated from one another and society as a whole.
The movie excels at saying what it had to say without relying on dialogue. The main character Jinah hardly says anything, except at her job where she talks to customers all day. She is estranged from her father, her neighbors, and even from the energetic younger colleague she is supposed to train. She eats lunch at a place where you order from a digital kiosk, then enter where a faceless cook hands you the food without talking. This is mirrored in her own job, where she herself is a faceless interface for a company. She doesn't want to stay a minute more then necessary with her father, but spends hours observing him through his security camera.
Despite most of the movie taking place behind either the main character's tv screen at home or PC screen at work, the movie is shot in a way that is visually interesting and varied. All the characters are interesting and relatable, and the actors shine when the characters interact.
Overall, this movie took a huge risk with its concept, they put in the effort to properly do what they set out to do, and turned it into something unique that is more and more rare today. 9/10.
The movie excels at saying what it had to say without relying on dialogue. The main character Jinah hardly says anything, except at her job where she talks to customers all day. She is estranged from her father, her neighbors, and even from the energetic younger colleague she is supposed to train. She eats lunch at a place where you order from a digital kiosk, then enter where a faceless cook hands you the food without talking. This is mirrored in her own job, where she herself is a faceless interface for a company. She doesn't want to stay a minute more then necessary with her father, but spends hours observing him through his security camera.
Despite most of the movie taking place behind either the main character's tv screen at home or PC screen at work, the movie is shot in a way that is visually interesting and varied. All the characters are interesting and relatable, and the actors shine when the characters interact.
Overall, this movie took a huge risk with its concept, they put in the effort to properly do what they set out to do, and turned it into something unique that is more and more rare today. 9/10.
It was hard to connect with the characters
JessiLossa3 March 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I felt this was a very weak film. I couldn't relate to the mais character, she seems more of a very bitter and boring person than a sad person at all. Her actions at the end doesn't match the kind of her personality, and nothing remarkable really happened to her to act in a different manner - the end looked like "I need to finish this in a proper way fast".
I understand the point of the movie, yet the filmmaker could have passed this message in a different manner, building up more empathy to the viewer so we could relate to the woman easier.
Giving the 3 stars because the acting of the main actress was really good. I really felt she was completely bitter in life.
I understand the point of the movie, yet the filmmaker could have passed this message in a different manner, building up more empathy to the viewer so we could relate to the woman easier.
Giving the 3 stars because the acting of the main actress was really good. I really felt she was completely bitter in life.
What Do We Need From It?
Hitchcoc11 January 2024
Film, like all art forms, has to offer us something personally. That also means that there will be lot of film that just never click. I would ask those who were bored, however, that they consider what the director was trying to do. Here we have a young woman who has fallen into a sort of despair. She works at a call answering service for a credit card company. We get to see how this could be really unpleasant. People often call because their own incompetence led them there. Some are angry because they needed their cards to work but they don't. And some treat these operators as if they were like minded friends. One guy has supposedly built a time machine and he doesn't want to carry cash into the past. He is a frequent caller and always gets the same response. What has happened to this young woman as that her life has become so consistently withdrawn, that she has lost all the joy. A man dies next door to her, and it turns out she never really knew him. She retreats to her apartment and shuts out the outside. Her father has become a widower and she can't handle his loneliness and rejects him out of hand. Eventually, she gets an epiphany from a young woman whose incompetence invites her cruelty. But there is much more to the story. I rather enjoyed this.
A very boring story from beg into end
mailtaskservice29 May 2022
Its about our new gen live since 1-2 decades sgo. Nobody cares anyone, especially with smart phones neighbours or colleagues ignored each other.
This story lacked too much, nothing interesting from start to end. Some are minor illogical but biggest problem is its boredom.
It is too simple written and too hectic made without realizing it does not content ant punch or effect. Wasted my time and money, max rating is 4.8/10 because thousands better movie out there.
This story lacked too much, nothing interesting from start to end. Some are minor illogical but biggest problem is its boredom.
It is too simple written and too hectic made without realizing it does not content ant punch or effect. Wasted my time and money, max rating is 4.8/10 because thousands better movie out there.
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