CANNES, France (AFP) - The 34-year-old actress was acclaimed for her brave performance as a grieving wife and mother in the South Korean melodrama, the first picture in four years by Lee Chang-dong, a former South Korean culture minister. "I can't believe I'm here," said Jeon, wearing a silver lame evening gown. "There are many fabulous actresses here at the festival and I would like to represent them all here tonight.
It is a great honour for me to have this prize." She has appears in nearly every scene of Lee's two-and-a-half-hour-long film, portraying Shin-ae, a piano teacher who moves with her son to the hometown of her late husband, whose death is still the source of nearly unbearable pain. When, in a cruel and unexpected twist in the story, the small boy is abducted and killed, Shin-ae turns to evangelical Christianity on the advice of her pharmacist, a devout believer, as a means of dealing with her grief.
Filled with religious fervour, she decides to visit her son's murderer in prison to tell him she has forgiven him. "Who is God to forgive him before I have?" she asks her Christian friends in a rage.
Jeon is known as a chameleon of Korean cinema, who fully inhabits her roles. Jeon scored a box office hit in 2003 with a remake of "Dangerous Liaisons" and won rave reviews in 2005 for her portrayal of a prostitute who contracts AIDS in "You're My Sunshine." "Secret Sunshine" was one of two South Korean moving competing for the Palme.
Kim Ki-duk presented "Breath," starring Taiwanese actor Chang Chen as a man on death row who falls in love with a scorned wife.
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