Song Hye Kyo: 'It Is My Honor To Be Compared to Actress Shim Eun Ha'

Director Lee Jeong Hyang said during the production presentation of the movie "A Reason To Live" that was held at Lotte Cinema Pacadiri on September 26, "When I made a comeback with 'The Way Home' after a three-year break, it was like coming back after being discharged from the military and being welcomed by many people. This time, I am making a comeback after a similar long break, and I really appreciate people's attention shown to my new movie." Lee was once the most promising female director from the end of the 1990s until the early 2000s. She debuted with her movie "Art Museum By the Zoo" in 1998, in which star actress Shim Eun Ha appeared as the female protagonist, and she garnered Best New Director's prizes at various film festivals in Korea at that time. When she released her second film "The Way Home," the movie achieved huge success, and almost 4.8 million people watched the film. She has been confirmed as a great director in terms of popularity and artistry, but it took almost nine years for her to produce her next film. Lee Jeong Hyang said, "I had written the synopsis for 'A Reason To Live' even before I debuted. After I finished filming 'The Way Home,' I announced that I would make a movie entitled 'Nobody Somebody' (the former title for 'A Reason To Live'), but as I wrote the script, I added my new thoughts that I could have as I was growing older, and I had to change the story to my new point of view. Since 2005, I had begun to write the script in earnest. I had only concentrated on writing the script."


"A Reason To Live" is a story about forgiveness, and it focus on the changing mind of the protagonist named Da Hye, who is a documentary production director. Da Hye (Song Hye Kyo) lost her fiance in a hit-and-run accident. She eventually forgives the perpetrator with great effort, and she begins to produce a documentary with the subject of "forgiveness" one year after the accident. As she continues to film the documentary, one day she comes to think about the perpetrator -- who was a seventeen-year-old boy -- and when she has obtains information about the boy, she becomes totally shocked. Why does the director entitle the film "A Reason To Live?" Lee explained, "I have wanted to give at least some consolation to the families of victims of murder cases through this movie. Usually the law tends to be indifferent to the family of the deceased. I have agonized about how a neglected family of the deceased would live. If they are living while keeping anger inside themselves, their lives would be devastated. But I thought that they might have come back to their ordinary lives that they had had before the accident if they pushed their anger outside their lives and just tried to live. So I made up the title of 'A Reason To Live' with this thought."

"Asia's star" actress Song Hye Kyo will appear as the protagonist of the movie. She has held activities across Asian countries so far, but she is making a comeback to Korean films after a four-year break since her last film "Hwangjinyi" in 2007. Song Hye Kyo said, "I was a huge fan of the director, Lee Jeong Hyang. When I heard the news that she completed the script, I made a call to her. And I actually fell in love with the script after reading it. I really wanted to appear in her movie." She also explained the reason why she had chosen this serious movie for her comeback film by saying, "After I read the script, I really wanted to play the character. I have not chosen any work after considering whether it was a commercial film or an art film. Instead, I have just chosen the work to appear in when I have come to have a thought of playing the character."

"A Reason To Live" follows the emotion of the main character. Song, who has presented acting that usually expresses great emotion, said, "I feel difficulties whenever I act, but this time it was particularly difficult for me to act because I had to express emotion that cannot be seen on the outside. Except that, I could naturally concentrate on acting thanks to the director's help." Song Hye Kyo has been chosen as the third female protagonist of Lee Jeong Hyang's third movie, and she has already been compared to actress Shim Eun Ha, who had appeared in Lee's film "Art Museum By the Zoo." Asked whether she feels pressure about people's comparisons, she answered, "I am a fan of Shim Eun Ha, so I am very glad about it. It could have been critics, depending on the success of the movie later, but anyway it is an honor for me that people mention me and my senior actress together."

The film will be released on October 27.

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