[HanCinema's Film Review] "Breathing Underwater"

The most immediately striking feature of "Breathing Underwater" is how it's a nature documentary where the predators are humans. Observe the beautiful underwater sequences where black-garbed women divers in Jeju masterfully swim through vibrant underwater ecosystems, only to grab or stab prey animals and then come to the surface, putting the defeated creatures in bright floating containers. If you've ever wondered where South Korea's ridiculous variety in seafood comes from, well, the women divers have a lot to do with that.

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These diving practices have existed since ancient times, hard though that may be to believe. Director Koh Heeyoung well documents the generally far-off nature of this work by focusing on one of its odder aspects- how the women expand their breathing capacity by repeating an odd chirping sound before going down under. In context this makes perfect sense without even a scientific explanation. All the same, seeing it on-screen is marvelous.

Alas, the women divers of Jeju are dying out. Quite literally, I'm afraid. The community of women divers profiled in "Breathing Underwater" are all over the age of fifty. One is even over the age of ninety (!). The money made is decent, even if it is of the sweatshop style of payment per product delivered. One woman even laments of having to struggle constantly at this job in order to put her five children through college.

But this culture is more than just the diving- it's the camaraderie. Beyond the ocean, we also frequently see the women dealing with their plunder on land. There's the careful preparation, the brief negotiations with the middlemen who take the seafood to market, and the constant generally jolly rapport they share with each other. And just to highlight the uniqueness even further, "Breathing Underwater" closes with a complex memorial rite that, just like the odd chirping, is an obvious artifact of a long ago time.

"Breathing Underwater" closes with a clear exhortation about the need for Jeju's women divers to be recognized as UNESCO Intangible Heritage. Seeing the sheer uniqueness of the women diver's culture up close for some seventy-five minutes, it's indisputable that on merit women divers deserve this classification. Unfortunately from a political angle such classification is probably essential to preserve the women divers' culture from modern development, as Jeju Island increasingly moves toward a tourist-centered economy. UNESCO Intangible Heritage may also have saved the livelihood of divers on the southern coast, whose work was destroyed thanks to pollution from the construction of the Gangjeong Military Base.

That's my editorial line- it doesn't show up in the documentary proper, which takes places in Woo Island (우도), off Jeju's eastern coast, far away from such worries. Which in the end is probably the single most admirable aspect of the lives of these women divers. Time and again, with minimal regard for the outside world, they do the traditional work that stretches back to ancient ancestral lines, the work of the mothers of their mothers of their mothers. What greater joy do they need, than to be the continuance of this legacy?

Review by William Schwartz

"Breathing Underwater" is directed by Koh Heeyoung.