President hails S. Korean actress for top Cannes

SEOUL—President Roh Moo-Hyun Monday congratulated South Korean actress Jeon Do-Yeon on winning the Cannes film festival’s best actress award, adding it showed the potential of the country’s cinema. “South Korean film has once again received tremendous applause from the world. I want to pay Jeon Do-Yeon compliments for her enthusiasm and efforts displayed in ‘Secret Sunshine’,” said the message from Roh, who also congratulated director Lee Chang-Dong and other staff.“‘Secret Sunshine’ has shown the potential of South Korean films. The South Korean people, blessed with creative and artistic talents, will be able to achieve a lot more in the future if the entire nation works together,” the president said. Jeon, 34, was Sunday acclaimed for her performance as a grieving wife and mother in the South Korean melodrama. It was the first picture in four years by Lee, a former South Korean culture minister.“I can’t believe I’m here,” said Jeon, wearing a silver lame evening gown, at the ceremony in the French resort. “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 appears in nearly every scene of Lee’s two-and-a-half-hour film, portraying Shin-Ae, a piano teacher who moves with her son to the hometown of her late husband.She dotes on her young son as a link to his father and the two have a palpably close relationship. When the small boy is abducted and killed, Shin-Ae turns to evangelical Christianity 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. But she is horrified when the killer tells her with a serene smile that he has repented and God has offered him absolution. “Who is God to forgive him before I have?” she asks her Christian friends in a rage.Jeon shot to stardom at home with her debut 1997 romance “The Contact”. The following year she starred as a schoolgirl in “Harmonium in My Memory” and picked up South Korea’s prestigious Blue Dragon and Grand Bell prizes for best actress. 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.”