One review described A Brand New Life/Une Vie Toute Neuve as "a heart-tugger rather than a full-on tearjerker," and I can't agree more. The heart tugging was so well achieved by the deep eyes of Jinhee played by Kim Saeron, and her eyes did make vivid imprints on my memory. 

Putting aside Jinhee's riveting eyes for now, I noticed something else. The orphaned girls in the film didn't fight over food, except when Sookhee showed a mildly upset reaction that there was no cake left for her. (I thought she was going to play the mean girl but maybe the protagonist was already given more than enough to carry on her shoulder.) And the girls were adorned with outfits from a wardrobe that would satisfy any ordinary girl's desire, albeit being second-hands. While the physical provision of the orphanage didn't seem to be too hard on the girls, there was no portrayal of any mentally serious mistreatment of the girls in the film, either. Admitted that what I know about orphanage is from indirect accounts; but the girls' lives in the orphanage seemed to lack reality. For that reason, though, the film made me feel less anxious than it would've otherwise throughout all the heart tugging. The point here is that the film did focus on the transition of the young girl traveling to her new world. 

Another less significant symbol in the film is female age. In the secluded setting of an orphanage, Sookhee believes her age would work against her that she keeps secret her menstruation, which she does describe as normal, unlike the world that she awaits to enter or has come from. It was a subtle allusion to the society that favors females that are younger than not. The age pressure on Sookhee is described one more time when she takes the dealer's role (after older Yeshin has left the orphanage) during the girls' nightly fortune-telling game with hwatu. Supposedly, she has to shuffle the cards according to the number of her age. When she has shuffled it eleven times for she is known as eleven years old in the orphanage and to prospective adoptive parents, she stealthily adds one more shuffle, baffling other younger girls. But with the power of her age, she insists that her shuffle was correct.

My friends and I often talk about the possibility of adoption when we are married and ready and all. Although I would be open with my adoptee kid(s) about their adoption while they are growing up, I would want the idea of adoption in their imagination, not a felt experience. In other words, I would prefer to adopt a kid in his/her infancy without perceptible memory of his/her separation from birth parents and bewildering transition into a new family. That's also the case with my adoptee friends whose adoption experiences and the persons that they are today have bolstered my desire to adopt kids in the future. They were united with their new families when they were no more than two years old. 

Before I watched the film, I read about the director, Ounie Lecomte. She was adopted when she was nine. I still remember a lot of things that happened to me (but not so much of what I did) when I was nine. So, for me, it was more heart wrenching to watch a nine-year old girl go through her world coming apart, one event after another shattering her trust that was inherent at her birth. I am curious why Lecomte chose to describe the transition in Jinhee's life. As far as I know, she lost her mom, suffered maltreatment by her stepmom, and grew up as an Asian adoptee in France, and that was in the 70s.