Bedford Park, 2026.
Written and Directed by Stephanie Ahn.
Starring Moon Choi, Son Sukku, Won Mi-kyung, Kim Eung-soo, Jefferson White, Taylor Kowalski, Vin Vescio, Cindy Hogan, Ferin Bergen, Toni D’Antonio, Paco Lozano, Simon Kim, Ian Oh, Joohong Jung, and Mia Love Kwon.
SYNOPSIS:
Two souls collide: a Korean American woman struggling with family expectations and her own aspirations, and an ex-wrestler haunted by his past. Their paths unexpectedly cross, leading to a transformative journey.
Rarely does a film put as much thought and cultural complexity into why its central characters gravitate toward one another as co-editor/writer/director Stephanie Ahn’s Bedford Park.
Thrust into each other’s lives due to a minor car accident, Moon Choi’s Audrey accompanies her traditional mother (Won Mi-kyung) a couple of days following that incident as she believes bringing him a gift basket, or “killing him with nice” would be better than going through the usual process with a law enforcement system that might not even take her statement correctly due to her broken English. Audrey hasn’t met him yet and is skeptical. Her senses are somewhat proven right when she travels to a poverty-stricken side of town and meets Son Sukku’s Eli, a volatile, disrespectful piece of work who wants nothing to do with either of them.
Mrs. Park attributes this to his westernization into American culture and behavior; Audrey, upset now, will eventually come to see that side as part of what makes his presence a safe blanket escape from her own family’s (which includes a bitter alcoholic father who has always amended coming to this country and accomplishing nothing as a grocery store clerk when he could have been respected in the corporate world back in South Korea, now still an unpleasant mess) smothering traditionalism.
Naturally, the source of Eli’s anger and his estrangement from his foster family will be revealed over time. A LOT will come out over time, as this is, for better and worse, a dialogue-heavy film that, while always gripping due to the chemistry between the co-leads, sometimes veers into exposition-dump territory that borders on repetitive. There’s no denying that some of this could have been condensed into a tighter overall narrative.
For now, all that will be said is that decorated former collegiate wrestling prodigy Eli is otherwise a gentle, caring man, always eager to help a disabled neighbor in between attending college classes, so he can eventually build a better life beyond working as a mall security guard. One American classmate playfully asks how old he is (presumably mid-30s) and, after some aggressive missionary sex, comes at him with a casual racist quip of “I thought you people were supposed to be smart.” Eli isn’t only westernized but also seems attracted to those women and to American culture; he has a flyer for a Boston cover band scheduled to be playing at a nearby bar.
It is a flyer Audrey notices after returning to Eli’s cramped home to brag about winning the legal battle over the car accident, only to, at all times, suffer another miscarriage in his bathroom that brings out his sensitive qualities (Audrey wants a child, but has a 5% chance of carrying a fetus to pregnancy, often meeting up with strangers from kink apps and further damaging her body with each failure). It is an admittedly deranged take on a meet-cute, executed in a raw, grounded way that builds on what we know about these characters so far, what we might not yet know, and what we don’t know. It is also a sequence that served as the premise for Stephanie Ahn’s debut as a filmmaker, a short film seamlessly integrated into this narrative feature.
In an effort to repay Eli for his sudden kindness, Audrey begins driving him to and from work. She also inadvertently eavesdrops on a conversation with him and that college classmate, hearing them talk about the Boston cover band, noticing his apathy toward the woman (likely from the hurtful words she didn’t seem to realize were more than a joke), and takes it upon herself to make it a date between them. That leads to one of the first big talky sequences (warmly and invitingly shot by cinematographer David McFarland). As the film stretches on, they continue to reveal more about one another and the baggage they carry, trying to push forward with something they refer to as “Han” (a perpetual sorrow and regret stemming from grief and being responsible of pulling that family forward) in a beautiful conversation.
There are moments when Bedford Park teases a questionable turn and a possible derailment, especially when Eli’s foster brother returns with demands to make things right for the family he left behind, which threatens to disrupt the dynamic of this burgeoning relationship with Audrey. For the most part, though, the film lives and dies on the power of its one-on-one dialogue exchanges between Audrey and Eli, which open up and expand layers each time, building to delicately shot intimacy scenes that seem to rewire both of their approaches to sex, and culminates in a bittersweet ending. At the center of it all is something profoundly challenging regarding their separate and shared cultural experiences as Koreans in New Jersey.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
