Every Sundance, at least one filmmaker emerges from seemingly nowhere who presents a stunning, fully-articulated piece of work. There’s a good argument that this year that filmmaker is Stephanie Ahn with her first feature, “Bedford Park,” playing in competition to packed houses and rapturous reviews.
A quiet story of a two Korean-Americans who start out as antagonists and gradually, tentatively and with great hesitation became friends, “Bedford Park” is a quintessentially indie experience that packs huge emotional power in its subtle, deliberate pace. Audrey, played by the well-known Korean actress Moon Choi and Eli, played by Korean superstar Son Sukku, are two broken people who each wrestle with trying to assert their independence while navigating complicated family relationships.
“Ahn… takes the wrestlings of the soul, the unexpressed longings, the turmoil we feel between love and obligation, and crafts them into great art,” wrote TheWrap’s critic Zachary Lee.
But Ahn, a diminutive Korean-American who showed up to TheWrap’s studio in jeans and a baseball cap, has not read that review or any other. She’s refused to expose herself to anything other than the screenings. Luckily, she was willing to be interviewed about the eight-year journey to make this very personal film.
Before setting out to make “Bedford Park,” Ahn said, she was working as an editor after having waited tables while trying to get a film made on the side. But she finally decided that if she was ever to get a film made, she’d have to set aside her work as an editor and write a deeply personal story.
It couldn’t be good, she knew. It had to be great. And it had to be rooted in her real life experience as a Korean-American who came to the United States as a two-year-old.
“I dug deep into the areas of my own experience that I just didn’t see being represented in films,” she said. “There are Asian American stories out there that I’ve thought were cliche and didn’t tap into the details of the experience, and just none of them resonated with me.”
She continued: “I wanted to tell a story about a woman who had to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having to balance two cultures and what that meant for her in terms of her own relationship with herself, her relationship with others and how to deal with trauma.
“And so my first drafts were very autobiographical, and I knew from being an editor and having worked in development and having written many other scripts, in order for the film to really resonate, you had to be willing to expand it beyond just your own story.”
In the film, the two characters meet over a car accident, but instead of fighting, they begin to develop a slow friendship. While Audrey is over at Eli’s place trying to settle for the damages, she has a miscarriage. Eli drives her to the hospital, and as a gesture of thanks, Audrey offers to drive Eli to his community college classes. The slow pace of the friendship-turned-romance, as each reveals their private trauma in bits and pieces, is much of the pleasure of the film.
“This is a film about two people looking to be held, jagged edges and all, without cutting the people who are doing the embracing,” wrote Lee in his review.
Ahn had never heard of either actor when she set out to cast the film. After searching Korean-American actors, she turned to Korea where six years ago she found Choi, a well known local actress, and they began rehearsing via Zoom over months.
“I wanted a killer actress,” said Ahn. “She absolutely embodied certain characteristics of me… a fighter spirit, a rawness inside that’s not always apparent on the outside.”
But she couldn’t find her Eli, who had been written as a Caucasian character. In fact, Ahn was insistent Eli had to be white.
“I wanted it to be an American film, and that was a big part of it. Like, we need a lead who is a white actor who could help bring us money.”
But the money wasn’t coming. And it was Choi, who was friends with Sukku, who convinced Ahn to consider auditioning him.
“I didn’t want to do it,” said Ahn, who agreed to meet Sukku as a courtesy. “I’ll admit I went in with a closed mind. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it, just meet him on Zoom.’ I knew he was a big star, but I wasn’t interested.”
But from the moment she met Sukku, she changed her mind. “He just exuded the thing that I knew I needed in Eli… a man who was a loner and was somewhat lost, and I saw facets of past pains and guardedness, protectiveness, self protection.”
The result is two stunning performances from actors who will likely be completely unknown to U.S. audiences and all the more affecting for it. Ironically, casting Sukku led to the first financing that came into the film from Hyundai, after traditional U.S. sources would not commit.
Ahn has poured eight years of her life into “Bedford Park,” which is up for acquisition. But for the moment, she is satisfied, knowing she made the indelible film she set out to do.
“I always wanted to make a film that made people feel something,” she said. “I so miss those movies that make me feel something and move me to tears and make me feel humanity. I don’t think you can set out to do that, because I think that’s dangerous. I think you’ve got to just focus on great characters and a great story and hope that will be the result.
“So if that’s what came out of this, then – amazing. But that wasn’t the focus. I just wanted to tell a great story.”
