Cart 2014

Sun-hee, Yum Jung-ah, a veteran cashier and mother of two, works at a large retail supermarket alongside Hye-mi, Moon Jeong-hee, a single mother. Both are friendly with Soon-rye, Kim Young-ae, a cleaning lady nearing retirement, and all of them are temporary workers. Sun-hee is a model employee who works diligently in the belief that once she gets promoted as a regular worker, she’ll be able to provide more for her children. However, their corporate employer abruptly notifies them that all the temporary workers will be laid off. Facing wrongful dismissals, Sun-hee, Hye-mi, Soon-rye, and fellow female employees such as naive ajumma Ok-soon Hwang Jeong-min and twenty-something Mi-jin Chun Woo-hee resolve to go on strike. They stage a series of increasingly impassioned protests against the company’s exploitative practices, which gains more strength when junior manager Dong-joon, the only male representative of the store’s labor union, joins in Kim Kang-woo. The shy and passive Sun-hee, who finds herself thrust to the demonstrations’ front lines, discovers within herself untapped resources of determination and resilience, which has an unexpected effect on her relationship with her estranged high school-age son, Tae-young Doh Kyung-soo. But as the women realize the power they can wield by taking a mutual stand, the company plays the workers against each other and Hye-mi, the leader of the strike, caves to the company’s pressure and gives up. The film highlights themes of solidarity, resilience, and the personal costs of collective action within a competitive corporate environment.