As much as reunions are a chance to catch up with people you haven't seen in awhile, they're also confrontations with the self. For constantly having to reintroduce yourself, means taking stock of your life, of acknowledging where you are at that point in time. Oh sure, you could make something up or omit anything that isn't flattering but then the reunion becomes all about hiding, doesn't it? Hiding from others and from the self. Each interaction is a lost opportunity to get real. Each sidestep takes you into the quagmire.
In Jeon Go-Woon's episodic Microhabitat, heroine Mi-so (Esom) has a series of reunions with old friends as she couch-surfs after losing her apartment rather than give up booze and cigarettes. No one she meets is very happy: one's a workaholic, one's in an unhappy marriage, one's unhappily divorced. Has Mi-so made a mistake by putting herself out on the street? Would having her own roof over her head make her happier? And who's helping whom when a cleaning lady comes for a sleepover? "My goal in life is to live debt free," Mi-so says while donating blood in order to scrape together the price of a movie ticket! Her heterosexist, manga-drawing boyfriend (Ahn Jae-hong) is equally strapped. Her parents are dead. A marriage proposal that could take her off the street isn't seriously considered and leads to a bout of paranoia (and a reason to move on to another couch). I guess Mi-so doesn't want to really see where she is or doesn't think her houseless life is as bad as we do. Then again, she is saving money! And her sole client likes her. Until that too passes. Nothing is permanent.
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