Actor You Need to Know: Jeon Jong-seo
Even in challenging roles, the ‘Ballerina’ star makes it look easy, and she never lets herself down to anything less than distinct when playing them
Jeon Jong-seo for 'Ballerina.' Photo: Netflix, courtesy of HanCinema.
Jeon Jong-seo, 29, aka Rachel Jun, is very gifted. Her characters and their circumstances are discernible, making them examples of well-wrought work from an actor who knows her job. Her first was her first high-profile release—the nonpareil psychological thriller film Burning (2018), directed by the lionized Lee Chang-dong, where she had Shin Hae-mi paired with Yoo Ah-in and Steven Yeun. In a romance that goes wrong—unexpectedly dark and twisted—she performed most magnificently in embodying Hae-mi and her conflicted emotions.
Burning was the first Korean movie to make the final nine-picture shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards and won the Fipresci International Critics’ Prize at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. It was also named the Best Foreign Language Film by the Toronto and Los Angeles Film Critics Associations. With that, Jeon became Best New Performer at the 2019 Asian Film Critics Association Awards, among other honors from critics worldwide for a debut in a class by itself.
Jeon’s enigmatic on-screen persona perhaps stems from this: when playing a specific role, she carefully leverages the intrinsic simplicity in her face. In the sense that she can be imposing and eerily inscrutable, but others can’t easily grasp what’s unfolding within her mind. That in mine best suited her Hae-mi in Burning. Her subsequent psychological thriller film, The Call (2020), panned out as a second significant driver in her rise to stardom.
The Call centers on Kim Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) and Oh Young-sook (Jeon Jong-seo), two women two decades apart who oddly connect over a cryptic phone call, whereby Young-sook attempts to rewrite her fate by jeopardizing Seo-yeon’s past. Jeon was sublime in her portrayal of the ruined, frustrated Young-sook—evil and devious in her goals. You’re anxious in her minutes of silence and her crazy outbursts—the ominous who heightens the story’s tension. Jeon won Best Actress at the 30th Buil Film Awards, the 20th Director’s Cut Awards, and the 57th Baeksang Arts Awards for the performance.
She notched a big one the next year, making her international movie debut in the fantasy adventure Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021), co-starring with Kate Hudson and Craig Robinson. It had its premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Much praise went out to Jeon for her rendition of the eponymous Mona Lisa, who draws on her special skills to flee from a sanitarium and seek to thrive in New Orleans. Next, she starred with Son Suk-ku as Ham Ja-young in the romantic comedy Nothing Serious—the tale of two lonesome individuals against dating and following their meeting via a dating app.
The actor makes it look easy, even in challenging roles, and I think she never lets herself down to anything less than distinct when playing them. She played Tokyo, a military-trained North Korean woman who joins the heist squad in the two seasons of Money Heist: Korea-Joint Economic Area (2022), the Korean adaptation of the hit Spanish series Money Heist.
In her latest, Ballerina, an action thriller flick, Jeon Jong-seo ably painted Jang Ok-ju carrying out her revenge quest in splendor. She features as a former bodyguard hunting down a sex trafficker who caused her best friend, Choi Min-hee (Park Yu-rim), to die. In her effort, she almost blasts on screen, wrecking everything that intervenes in her drive for retribution.
Essentially, Jeon Jong-seo’s power play is Ballerina in its entirety, and she plays it with staggering ability. The film is also on our list of the 10 best Korean movies of 2023.
