Choi So-young is a university student majoring in law whose studies are supported by her grandmother. However after her grandmother dies, and with no parents or other relatives to support her, she is faced with the prospect of abandoning her career dreams and dropping out of school. With her rent overdue, So-young looks for a job, but finds that the only men willing to hire her are interested in favors that extend beyond the workplace.
Meanwhile So-young has a friend, the aspiring novelist Hee-sook, who has come across a rather unusual diary written by a young woman who has since died. The diary reveals that a powerful politician named Choi Rim has a lost biological daughter, born to a woman he knew in the years before his marriage. But Assemblyman Choi has no knowledge of his daughter's identity or whereabouts.
Hee-sook, with a novelist's appreciation for dramatic plot twists, suggests something that So-young would never consider on her own - posing as the daughter of Assemblyman Choi in order to put herself through college. So-young rejects it out of hand, but as time passes and she becomes more desperate, it starts to look like a more attractive option.
A College Woman's Confession is Shin Sang-ok's big hit film of the 1950s, and indeed the film that established his career. Reportedly based on a French feature which in Korea was translated as Betrayal, the film is notable for the starmaking performance of Choi Eun-hee as So-young, and for its focus on the challenges faced by women in the post-war era. It's not hard to see why the film was so popular with female audiences of its time, given its dramatic strengths and the highly unusual portrait of a talented female lawyer who devotes herself to defending disenfranchised women (even as she herself is in danger of losing everything).
Aesthetically, while not considered one of Shin's very best films, Confession contains accomplished acting, an effective use of suspense (despite a somewhat slow beginning), and a keen feel for image and sound during an era when technical challenges dominated the filmmaking process. (Less effective is the film's musical soundtrack, with its sudden bursts of dramatic music that may seem comical to contemporary audiences). Especially notable is the performance of Kim Seung-ho as Assemblyman Choi, whose measured, soft-spoken dialogue and deliberate manner overlay a passionate devotion to his newfound daughter.
There is also an interesting extended flashback that occurs in the latter part of the film, about a woman accused of murder who So-young has chosen to defend. (The defendant is played by well-known actress Hwang Jeong-soon, who together with Choi won an acting award at the first edition of the short-lived Domestic Film Awards in 1959) We see in her story parallels to So-young's own experience, despite the vast divergence in their ultimate fates. The film's sudden return to the grim realities of poverty in the midst of So-young's professional advancement serves to place an asterix next to her story and function as a reminder of what most people of that era were experiencing.
Darcy Paquet