May you never have to face joblessness in middle age. That is something I can wish for most people and truly mean it. Being financially insecure is no fun, but somehow more tolerable in your teens, twenties, and even thirties. Past forty, you need to know where your support is coming from because –let’s face facts- you’re running out of options.
Speaking of running out of options, Lee Chan-sil (Kang Mal-geum) just lost her job. It isn’t her fault – her boss died suddenly and without warning. The boss was a big shot movie director who owned his own studio where Lucky Chan-sil worked as a producer. Now you may ask: “What exactly does a movie producer do?” And the correct answer is: “Not enough to keep their job if it comes to that.”
And it came to that. With boss having fatal heart attack at lunch and resulting sudden talent vacuum, the studio immediately ceased to make money and all non-essential personnel had to go. Lucky Lucky Chan-sil. She does the double walk of shame at the beginning of the film. It involved not only losing her job, but her place to live as well. She has replaced it with an apartment that could only be reached by funicular. But neither road, nor funicular exists in this particular area of the city, hence walk of shame.
So what do you do when you are, shall we say, over 30, unemployed, and all you know is how to produce a movie (whatever that means)? Chan-sil takes up housecleaning and develops two on-and-off relationships: 
one with a boy toy (Bae Yoo-ram – is “Bae” Korean for “Beau”?) and one with a ghost. Both relationships are problematic.
When the boy toy calls you nothing but “Producer Lee,” I don’t really see romance there. It’s like when Marcie calls Peppermint Patty, “Sir.” It’s not a term that implies intimacy, huh? As for the other, well, by the time the ghost shows up with an accordion, it’s like, “blast. I’m too far invested to quit now.”
Lucky Chan-sil amounts to a portrait of a middle-age woman still finding herself. I cared a lot more for her plight than any single action within it. I wouldn’t call Lucky Chan-sil a good film or a bad film, just the kind of film you see at a film festival which has a few bright spots, but nothing you’ll remember five minutes into your next picture. I could see it being remade in Hollywood, but a Hollywood studio would have to rewrite her entire motivation to guarantee an audience, and by then the studio in charge would probably have lost the soul of Chan-sil or Lucky Chantilly or whatever they decided to call her. Would that hypothetical be such a tragedy? Unfortunately, no. There’s not enough within the original film to love.
After severing her taut employment string
Ms. Chan-sil turned to a cougar fling
Mistaken title? Not quite
She got lucky, all right
Because film festivals are still a thing
Not Rated, 96 Minutes
Director: Cho-hee Kim
Writer: Cho-hee Kim
Genre: Whatchagonnado?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Those stuck in a mid-life crisis
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Those sick of being stuck in a mid-life crisis
