Jeon Jong-seo

In Burning (2018), Jeon Jong-seo gives Hae-mi enough feeling and unpredictability to make the men watching her seem inattentive, despite their interest. They want her, but wanting does not make them good judges of her. We found their attention unsettling because Jeon makes it seem so inadequate to the woman in front of them. She gives us reason to care about Hae-mi beyond the question of what she means to either man.

This was her debut, directed by Lee Chang-dong, and the part asks for more than an air of mystery. The screenplay by Lee and Oh Jung-mi makes Jong-su’s longing hard to separate from his resentment of Ben’s advantages. Jeon has to make Hae-mi matter in a story so occupied by what the men want. She does it without making her an answer to either man’s problems.

The subsequent roles take her further into genre films. She plays the antagonist Young-sook in The Call (2020), then takes the lead in Ana Lily Amirpour’s English-language fantasy Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021). Ballerina (2023), an action-revenge film, reunites her with The Call director Lee Chung-hyun. These are sensible uses of an actor whose playfulness can carry a threat, though we would not want threat to become all that casting directors see in her.

The risk is that scripts use her expressive eyes and spontaneous physicality as a reason not to write the character properly. A woman can remain obscure to the men around her without being obscure to us, and Burning gets that distinction largely right. Its uncertainty occasionally feels prolonged, but the three leads give us enough to watch in their small differences in confidence and desire. Start there, provided a patient thriller is what the evening needs.