“The first and the last in my lifetime”···Why director Kim Il-lan invited two trans women to a ‘women-only bathhouse’ - 경향신문

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Director Kim Il-lan of the film <Eddie Alice: Take> is having a photo interview at the Kyunghyang Shinmun studio on the 27th. Lee Jun-heon, reporter

When does a documentary begin? Director Kim Il-lan, a founding member of the queer-feminist media collective Yeonbunhongchima, says her first new film in eight years, <Eddie Alice: Take>, began with “a fateful encounter.”

<Eddie Alice: Take>, which opened on the 28th of last month, is a documentary that interweaves the lives of two trans women (MTF), Eddie (Park Seo-yeon) and Alice (Lee Jeong-min). The relationship between Kim and Eddie, who counsels LGBTQ youth at the human rights group ‘Ddingdong’, goes back a long way. The cheerful Eddie, “who knows how to throw the joke that is needed in hard moments,” also served for over a year as MC of the queer variety show <Queer Service> on the YouTube channel ‘Yeonbunhong TV’, directed by Kim Il-lan.

Eddie in the film <Eddie Alice: Take>. Courtesy of Cinemadal

It was Eddie who first proposed a documentary, saying she wanted to record her life. It was a time when hate speech against transgender people frequently appeared online. When we met Kim at the Kyunghyang Shinmun office in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 27th of last month, she said, “At first, the thought that came before anything else was ‘Will I really be able to do it?’.”

In 2019, she met the other protagonist, Alice, “as if by fate.” It happened when she heard that ‘a trans woman cinematographer had been summarily dismissed from a drama set’. After meeting Alice, the person who had been fired, and hearing her story firsthand, Kim said she sensed that ‘she could start a documentary’.

Although Eddie and Alice may seem bound together by the identity of being trans women, their personalities and their transition processes differ. Alice underwent sex confirmation surgery but did not have ‘surgeries that make one look more like a woman’. With her deep voice, she says she went through “a somewhat different process” from many other transgender people, who often “first change the face and body shape and then undergo transition.” Conversely, Eddie, who first changed her appearance, decides after long deliberation to undergo sex confirmation surgery.

Alice in the film <Eddie Alice: Take>. Courtesy of Cinemadal

Shot between 2021 and 2024, the documentary does not artificially seat the two, whose spheres of activity differ, in one place. Nor does it try to create a new context by intercutting their stories at the scene level. The film shows, first in one sweep, the story of Alice, who shakes off the hurt from the drama set and begins studying dance, and then, in another sweep, the story of Eddie, who goes on to undergo sex confirmation surgery. Kim said, “People tend to think that minorities will know each other well within the community, but jobs, family forms, ages, and transition processes all differ,” adding, “I felt that scenes such as the two sitting down to have a conversation about identity were unnecessary.”

Eddie (left) and Alice sit on the seashore in the film <Eddie Alice: Take>. Courtesy of Cinemadal

Eddie and Alice share a location as on-screen participants only twice. The scene where they meet on the beach and exchange well-wishes functions like a hinge, shifting the focus from Alice to Eddie.

The second is an orchestrated bathhouse scene. Kim had long heard from Eddie and Alice how difficult a space the women-only restroom is for trans women. “Even though Eddie has fully completed an outward transition, she tenses up every time she goes to a restroom, and Alice likewise says that, because of her voice, she tells herself never to speak in restrooms lest others be startled.”

If the women-only restroom is a space ‘where their right to be there is routinely questioned’, the women-only bathhouse is for them “a space that has felt off-limits from the outset.” <Eddie Alice: Take> features a women-only bathhouse where the two can bathe at ease. Watching the crew prepare the shoot as the tub is filled, Alice says, “This will be the first and the last.” The two savor their own baths among the extras who fill the pool.

The film also captures the two as they learn of the death of the late Staff Sergeant Byun Hee-soo, the first soldier to undergo sex confirmation surgery. The obituary came not long after filming began. Eddie, who had been close with Byun, expresses her grief in words, while Alice silently watches the video news announcing the death. Kim says she thought, “This is a social death, and it is a story that must be included in the documentary.”

Alice also served as lighting director for <Eddie Alice: Take>. The film straightforwardly captures Alice working on set as a crew member, and there is a making-of pleasure in seeing her set up lighting for the interview with Eddie.

Director Kim Il-lan of the film <Eddie Alice: Take> is having a photo interview at the Kyunghyang Shinmun studio on the 27th. Lee Jun-heon, reporter

Over the years, Kim has advanced public discourse through documentaries that delve deeply into social issues. <Mamasang> (2005), which centers on camptown women, broadened sexual discourse, and <3XFTM> (2009), which centers on three transgender men, sought to render sexual minorities visible. <Two Doors> (2012) and <Gongdong Jeongbeom> (2018), which address the Yongsan tragedy, call out to ensure the disaster is not forgotten.

<Eddie Alice: Take> is, among them, the documentary that feels most “personal.” “As the participants share intimate stories as queer people, I found there were many moments when I connected emotionally as well. On set, I even ended up sharing personal experiences with the staff.”

Kim said she hopes that, at least after <Eddie Alice: Take> opens, it will become natural to talk publicly about the discourse surrounding transgender people. That is why they prepared special screenings not as a typical GV (guest visit) but in the form of a ‘lecture series’. From the 21st to the 31st of last month, six sessions featured short talks and discussions by physicians, gender studies scholars, and activists on topics such as ‘menstruation of trans women’, ‘voice and transition’, and ‘sex confirmation surgery and abortion procedures’.

If the earlier ‘lecture series’ was intended to break the frame of limited representations surrounding transgender people, from the 3rd they will continue with themes that broaden the field of documentary criticism. Film critics are set to have candid conversations with the director about <Eddie Alice: Take>. Kim said, “Is it not that medicine that is good for the body tastes bitter? I think the territory of criticism has to expand for me to be able to make better works.”

Director Kim Il-lan of the film <Eddie Alice: Take> is having a photo interview at the Kyunghyang Shinmun studio on the 27th of last month. Lee Jun-heon, reporter