On her way to Miryang, Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon) suddenly asks Jong-chan (Song Kang-ho), the owner of the car center, who came to fix her broken car. “Do you know what Miryang means? “It’s called secret sunlight.” Her life is thirsty for meaning. And Jong-chan follows this secretive woman from that day on. Always four or five steps behind, approaching when called and retreating when pushed.
In fact, death was not the first time her husband left her. Her husband loved someone else. <Secret Sunshine> is a movie whose beginning is not the beginning and whose end is not the end. Shin-ae has come a long way since before the movie started, and even after the movie ends, nothing is over for her. Her 2 hours and 20 extra running time is just a nasty piece of life that has been cut down. Shin-ae has (presumably) experienced despair three times in her past, unknown to her audience, and she experiences two terrible losses before the audience’s eyes.
Allegedly, she was at odds with her father, had not been supported in her piano studies, and had devoted her life to her love instead of that dream, but she had been betrayed. Shin-ae’s time shown in <Milyang> flows straight through without flashbacks or fantasy scenes, and the segments are clearly divided (goes to Miryang – lives – her son is kidnapped – influenced by Christianity and forgives the criminal – becomes angry at God and goes crazy – treated and discharged). A long time ago, director Lee Chang-dong expressed hope that a different narrative might be possible in movies, saying that novels require events, but our daily lives do not have a series of twists and turns. <Secret Sunshine> rebels against the ‘myth of origin’ that a person’s happiness and unhappiness begins and ends at one point.