PermPerm

Perm portrays the life of a married migrant woman, Nisha, who lives with her mother-in-law in a rural village in Korea. The former sentence already contains many meanings. In an era where instant pleasure replaces patience, the movie’s long nitpicking will never be easy for audiences. Episodes arranged in parallel and classical plots add a sheer ‘strategic’ intensity to this film. The audience is tested for their sensitivity. However, sensitivity is acceptance, not a response, perceiving external stimuli. Like insensibility, expressing pleasure and displeasure instinctively is also far from the meaning of sensitivity. The easy identification of the antagonistic relationship between migrant women and her mother-in-law is a similar way of discriminating in the order of male-female-migrant women. In this case, Nisha is thrown into the reproduction of relationships as much as she is being forced to reproduce the population. This is why this 30-minutes nitpicking scene needs to be explored more thoroughly, even if it is harsh. Above all, Nisha must have struggled under oppression she had been through for more than 30 months and her mother-in-law for more than 30 years. The distinction of Perm comes rather late, but not hasty. By then, the film cuts off the tangled relationship and imagines a connection by differentiating the relationship. It is also the moment when the director Shekh Al Mamun’s perspective shines the most as a diaspora film director. With his fully cinematic techniques, he vertically penetrates the horizontal gaze between the migrant woman and her mother-in-law. (and he is brave enough to expose his position at this time). Are married migrant women in rural areas in the mire of the traditional patriarchal system? Then the liberation for these women also begins here. (PARK Chi-young)