Abortion was fully legalized in South Korea four years ago, but for numerous reasons obtaining one still presents a considerable hurdle for the teenage protagonists in “En Route To.” Yoo Jaein’s auspicious debut feature, her graduation project at the Academy of Film Arts after several well-received shorts, is largely propelled by that logistical crisis. Yet it’s far from a one-issue film, taking an assured, unpredictable path through seriocomic coming-of-age territory that deftly touches on numerous topics, and by its close has added up to an impressively ambitious narrative journey.
We first meet Yun-ji (Sim Su-bin) as she’s sneaking back into a girls’ high school dormitory at night, though with her furtive, deer-in-the-headlights demeanor, she hardly seems the type to be hiding some wild extracurricular life. Her roommate is the gangling, brash Kyung-sun (Lee Ji-won), a born hustler who monetizes her education by selling vaping liquid flavor cartridges she’s bought online to fellow students too young to buy them over the counter. The two girls could not be more unalike, and are not friends. Both are surprised when their homeroom teacher, Mr. Han, does not show up one day for unexplained “personal reasons.” Soon his wife Min-yeong (Jang Sun) is barging onto the premises, demanding to know if anyone has a clue as to his whereabouts in what rapidly becomes a missing-person case.
Actually, Yun-ji has a good idea why he’s MIA, though she can’t say so: She’d just told the handsome 36-year-old she is carrying his child, which news he took poorly. Now she’s frantically trying to secure means to terminate the pregnancy, and being underage (as well as sans any parents to provide consent) cannot avail herself of the standard clinic options. To obtain a pricey pill online, she “borrows” money from Kyung-sun’s vape-loot stash. The roomie is furious, giving chase as Yun-ji traipses off to receive her overnight delivery. But a half hour into “En Route,” their conflict abruptly become an alliance. While Kyung-sun had somehow already guessed at her roomie’s illicit affair, she is shocked into sympathy upon learning of her abandonment while pregnant.
That’s the first of several effective tonal shifts here, all of which deepen our understanding of characters in an unexpected yet organic fashion. Later, there is caper-like comedy at a funeral home, which then sobers in a poignant tete-a-tete between Yun-ji and Min-yeong, astute revelations of the broken homes that shaped our young heroines, a climactic riot of slapstick destruction at an emergency school meeting and more.
As both writer and director, Yoo takes risks she pulls off with admirable dexterity, maintaining unobtrusive control over her adept performers, set-pieces and pacing (though oddly no editor is credited). The film’s overall low-key tenor downplays both moral judgment and conspicuous style, though neither are entirely lacking. Not least of its clever end-runs is the way that while the big issues — to abort or not to abort, marital infidelity, sexual exploitation of youth — remain confidential concerns among the protagonists, this complex scenario ultimately strikes nearly all the crisply drawn peripheral figures as a scandal about … vaping.
Careful not to distract from an intimate character focus, Yoo does nonetheless craft its setting with care, her polished presentation occasionally interesting in choice of composition and location. Music plays a lesser role, as our heroines tangibly have too much on their minds to need much sonic underlining — let alone to seek distraction from the world of K-pop.
