When we first meet the unnamed protagonist of Lee Mirang's Concerning My Daughter, a widow in her 50s played with masterful restraint by Oh Min-ae, she's eating alone in front of the television.

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Her life is not spent entirely in solitude but is suffused with a familiar kind of middle-age loneliness. She banters with colleagues at the senior care facility where she works and makes small talk with the neighbors but remains at a distance, emotional depths hinted at in a face that expresses more than she knows.

We also meet her daughter, Green (Lim Semi), a part-time university lecturer who mainly seems interested in hitting mom up for a loan, and her patient, Ms. Lee (Heo Jin) -- an elderly woman once famous for helping needy children around the world but now slipping into dementia, with no family of her own at her bedside.

The mother's routine is shaken up when Green, out of financial options, moves back home, accompanied by her long-term live-in partner, a woman named Rain (Ha Yoon-kyung). As a same-sex couple, they also find themselves at a distance from a South Korean society where LGBTQ rights remain limited.

"I wanted to focus on the solitude of the four women, how it could pass through different generations," Lee told UPI in an interview at the Busan International Film Festival, where the film premiered this week. "What that solitude could mean, could signify -- I wanted to focus on that feeling."

Concerning My Daughter, Lee's first feature, is based on the 2017 novel by best-selling author Kim Hye-jin. (The English translation was published in 2022.)

Rather than easing her loneliness, the added company at home only serves to further isolate the mother. She doesn't accept her daughter's relationship as anything more than "playing house," as she puts it, a detour on the necessary journey toward settling down with a traditional family.

Her attitude seems driven less by overt prejudice than a growing terror that she and her daughter will die alone in the heartbreaking and undignified manner she sees daily with Ms. Lee. That fear threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the mother pushes Green away while simultaneously investing all of her energy into what seems like the lost cause of rescuing her elderly patient from an increasingly bleak fate.

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"The mother is the type of woman we often see in South Korea, who has had to constantly take care of someone other than herself," Lee said. "I hope this film can be the catalyst for a conversation about this issue."

Rain, meanwhile, makes every effort to be a conscientious guest. But offers of a home-cooked meal or morning pour-over coffee by the aspiring chef are met with tight-lipped refusal.

"Can we try to not run into each other?" the mother finally snaps at her.

Rain is not easily deterred. In a characterization that is perhaps too on-the-nose, she mirrors the mother's caretaker role, chipping away at her icy facade with tireless sincerity.

Concerning My Daughter is far too layered to tie things together neatly, and ambiguity lingers as the credits roll. But for a moment, when the ice does begin to crack and we are given a glimpse of the three separate generations finally making a connection, it carries a glacier-sized emotional heft.

"The film is not just about the daughter in the title, or the mother," Lee said. "Ultimately, the story contains a little bit of all of us."

Within the film, it is Rain who seems to have the clearest vision of what is at stake.

"Being together," she tells the mother, "is the only thing we can do."

Concerning My Daughter won the CGV Award at the Busan International Film Festival's Vision Awards, held Thursday evening.