``Yeojah, Jeong-hye (This Charming Girl)'' begins with the heroine (Kim Ji-soo) cleaning the patio of her home, tending and watering her plants, delicately wiping the floor. Jeong-hye, 29, works at a local post office. She lives quietly, self-exiled to an interior, feminine world, a present life deeply affected by the psychological wounds of her past.

She is eccentric like a character from a Murakami Haruki story, and inhabits a world controlled by strong memories. But she is also trapped there in a state of emotional uncertainty, quiet and fearful of the world outside. She spends hours watching the home shopping network and annoys her friends by insisting on going to the same restaurant no matter what. Even though her habits are eccentric, they are immediately accessible.

We peer into the life of an average woman in contemporary Seoul. She recoils from the objectifying, masculine exterior world and prefers the comfort of her domestic one.

She struggles to solve her interior problems by keeping to herself. But her efforts are futile, and she will eventually have to open up if she is to survive. She slowly works to extricate her scarred psyche and repression.

One day, she finally summons the courage to invite a regular post office customer, a shy writer, to dinner. Their encounters are delicate and cautious. When he stands her up and offers a lame excuse, she has to decide whether to believe him.

The South Korean film “This Charming Girl,” making its North American debut at the Sundance Film Festival, manages to create a delicate, quiet character study without becoming insufferably pretentious. With his first feature, Lee Yoon-ki shows a gift for studying subdued and internally conflicted characters that won him the New Currents Award at the Pusan International Film Festival.

Kim, whose previous credits are all TV work, debuts impressively in a demanding performance that requires strong work in every scene. Towards the end of the film, with Jeong-hae in a state of emotional uncertainty, a situation of potentially damning consequences comes out of nowhere as the heroine considers a way to release her emotions. The camera holds on Kim's face as she experiences a rush of emotions before reaching a conclusion. This surprising, simple scene brings out the core of the character and makes some of the film's less engaging moments more significant.