‘Mother’ star Kim Hye-ja goes back in time

84-year-old returns to the big screen after 9yrs with drama about two girlhood friends torn apart under Japanese colonial rule

Remember the nameless old lady lost in a mad, trancelike dance against the sunset in Bong Joon-ho's "Mother"?

The taut 2009 thriller was one of Bong's earliest masterpieces, way before "Parasite" made him a name the whole world knew. And holding it all together was a tour de force performance from Kim Hye-ja as a widow hell-bent on clearing her intellectually disabled son's name.

At home, Kim has been the nation's favorite TV mom for generations. K-drama fans might recognize her from "The Light in Your Eyes" (2019) and "Heavenly Ever After" (2025), tearjerkers that mined the actor's uncanny knack for late-life pathos.

Now the screen legend returns to theaters for the first time in nine years with "Still Shining," a drama about two elderly friends, fresh off its premiere at last week's Busan International Film Festival.

Kim, who turns 85 next week, was seen being helped down the red carpet at the festival, coughing frequently. On Thursday, she missed the press screening at Megabox Coex in southern Seoul.

"She came down with a cold and couldn't make it," director Song Il-gon said before the screening. "I talked to her on the phone earlier, and she kept saying how sorry she was. She wanted to come even if someone had to help her in, but she just wasn't well enough."

"Still Shining" follows two grannies, Sun-ok (Kim) and Jeong-im (Cha Mi-kyung), who reunite 60 years after growing up together in a mountain village in 1942, when imperial Japan was dragging young Koreans off to serve its war effort.

It's the latest Korean film to take on the women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, following the grisly, borderline-exploitative "Spirits' Homecoming" (2016) and the more crowd-pleasing "I Can Speak" (2017). This one takes a relatively gentle tack — if not an entirely schmaltz-free one — and folds in themes like friendship, aging and the frailty of memory along the way.

Kim had wanted to step away from acting. In a handwritten letter to reporters, she said a line from the director changed her mind: "Sun-ok doesn't cry. She's someone who believes, to the very end, that the time she spent with her friend still shines."

"We have to remember how much those girls suffered," Kim wrote. "But I hope we don't forget what a wonderful life they wanted to live, too. That's why I knew I had to do this."

At the presser, Song praised Kim as "the greatest living actor" and explained why he leaned so heavily on close-ups of his star.

"There's a whole universe in her face," he said. "Even when she isn't speaking, there is something about the way she looks at someone — a faint smile, the smallest expression."

Her co-stars, for their part, couldn’t say enough about how generous she was on set. "She's like a watercolor, like paint dropped onto white paper that spreads out so beautifully," Cha said. "I didn't even have to think about the scene. I just found myself blending right into it with her."

Choi Ju-eun, who plays the younger Jeong-im, said she was a nervous wreck around an actor she looked up to so much. "The second the cameras rolled, she told me, 'Go ahead and do whatever you want with it,'" Choi said. "That gave me so much courage."

Kim, by way of Song, got the last word. "She said she hopes people leave the theater with their hearts a little warmer," the director said. "After a good cry, she told me, you come out softer."

"Still Shining" opens in theaters Wednesday.