SOUTH Korean star Jeon Do Yeon will be obscure no more when she returns to the Cannes International Film Festival for the first time since she won the best-actress award there in 2007.

Jeon, 37, was an unknown when she bowled over critics in her role as a widowed mother who tries to start a new life in the South Korean countryside, in the movie Secret Sunshine.

Now she is the main attraction of the movie The Housemaid, which will be in competition at Cannes when it opens next month.

The movie is a remake of a South Korean classic.

“Cannes in 2007 was my first film festival and I was taken aback by how no one noticed the actress Jeon Do Yeon,” she said in a recent interview. Jeon was dubbed the “Queen of Cannes” when she returned to South Korea, landing endorsement deals, TV appearances and photo spreads in fashion magazines.

She was named by trade publication Variety as one of the 50 most influential women in entertainment in the world.

She then starred in a small movie, married and took a break from film to give birth to her first child, a daughter.

In her new movie, which makes its international premiere at Cannes, she plays an innocent and educated woman who finds a job as a maid in the home of an exceptionally affluent family, and is soon ensnared in a love triangle with the wealthy husband and his wife, who is pregnant with twins.

Intrigue, passion and betrayal follow, as well as a scene where Jeon’s character, named Eun Yi, hangs from a chandelier.

“It was painful, scary and frightening,” Jeon said of the shooting, where she was attached to a harness and dangled several metres in the air.

The movie also has steamy scenes that have created a stir in the local media and anxiety for the new mother.

“All movies that have bed scenes are shocking and a lot of talk goes around the bed scenes whenever a movie comes out. What is different about this one is that the shock does not come from visual scenes but the emotional shock,” she said.

Jeon, considered one of the best actresses in South Korea, sees her limited ability in foreign languages as holding her back from taking a role in a major overseas production. But still, she would not mind giving it a try.

“When director Lee Ang came to (South) Korea, I had the opportunity to meet him
and I was swept away. For (him), I am a bit willing to leap the language barrier,” she said.

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