After 10 years of local stardom, Jeon Do-yeon finally wins nod at Cannes

Posted on : 2007-05-28 16:01 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST

Unlike other actresses of her rank at home, Jeon Do-yeon has had no luck in spreading her name abroad.

Her local hits never went to major film festivals, while new faces like Im Soo-jeong or TV drama fixture Lee Young-ae have had the red carpet unrolled for them in Cannes and Venice.

The wheel of fortune has just been reversed for Jeon. She won the best actress award in the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday with her role in "Secret Sunshine" by Lee Chang-dong. In his congratulatory message to the actress, President Roh Moo-hyun sent a "big round of applause for your passion and efforts that delivered superb acting." In her 10-year screen career, Cannes was the first international fete that invited her.

"In Korea, they have recognized me as an actress and gave me many awards, but to receive the award in Cannes will be an important part of my acting life," she told reporters.

Since she debuted in a cosmetics commercial in 1990 that featured her spotless, toothy smile, Jeon has cruised mostly to perky, easygoing, amicable roles in TV dramas like "The Sunny Side of the Young" and "Our Heaven."

The serious side of her was brought out in her debut film "The Contact." The 1997 melodrama by Jang Yun-hyeon, loved by critics and audiences alike, started a fresh wave in Korean cinema with its depiction of young, urban dwellers seeking emotional connections in Internet chat rooms.

Her following films earned her title "chameleon actress."

Eyebrows were raised when she played sultry sex scenes such as an unfaithful urban wife in "Happy End" (1999). In "My Mother, the Mermaid" (2004) her dual role as the mother and the daughter contributed to the film's commercial success.

Her versatile screen qualities seemed to reach their zenith in "You Are My Sunshine" (2004), in which Jeon plays a seductive girl working at a coffee shop, who turns out HIV positive after marrying her true love, but she still had a way to change.

"I thought I'd pulled out everything Jeon Do-yeon has to give, but that was a misunderstanding," Park Jin-pyo, director of the box-office hit "You Are My Sunshine."

With over a dozen local cinema awards now under her belt, Jeon has discussed the difficulty she experienced playing Shin-ae, the main character in "Secret Sunshine." The extreme pain the young widow feels after her only son is kidnapped and killed was beyond understanding for the actress, who has no child yet. Jeon, 34, married in March.

"I felt pain in my heart," Jeon said after a preview in Seoul in early May. She said the hardest moment came when she had to pick up the phone when it was the kidnapper demanding a ransom, a critical moment in the story when her vivacity life suddenly turns into indefinite fear.

"Secret Sunshine" tells the story of Shin-ae, who leaves Seoul for a remote town to rearrange her life after her unfaithful husband is killed in a car accident. Shin-ae tries her hardest to adjust to the provincial community and not to be looked down on as a single mother, sometimes by ostentatiously pretending to be rich.

Her behavior eventually causes her tragic fall when a neighbor abducts her only son and kills him after she fails to provide a huge ransom.

The unrequited love for her from a snobbish, easygoing car repair shop owner, played by Song Kang-ho, adds comical touches to the gloomy story. It also deals with the issue of religious salvation as Shin-ae tries to find solace in Christianity and then bitterly turns away from it after discovering her own falseness.

Jeon is the second Asian to win the Cannes best actress award following Maggie Cheung credited with her role in "Clean" by French director Olivier Assayas. She was also the second Korean to win an award at a major international film competition. Kang Soo-yeon won the best actress award at the 1987 Venice Film Festival for her role in "Surrogate Mother."

SEOUL, May 28 (Yonhap News)

Related stories