'Miss Baek' director Lee Ji-won's long-delayed family drama finally lands a September release From left: Actor Kim Young-min, Ha Ji-won, director Lee Ji-won, Kim Si-ah, Ryu Seung-ryong and Kim Sun-young pose at a press conference for "Portrait of a Family" at CGV Yongsan I'Park Mall in Seoul on Wednesday. (Newsis) "Portrait of a Family," the English title of the family crime drama hitting Korean theaters next month, gives away next to nothing about the film. The original Korean title, "Bigwang," has a bit more going on.It's the name of a card in hwatu, the Korean take on the Japanese card game hanafuda that's long been a national pastime in its own right. Among the deck's five prized "bright" cards, which rack up the game's biggest scores, the bigwang is the odd one out: of lesser value than the rest but a match-winner in the right company."It happens to be the only card in the deck with a person on it," director Lee Ji-won said at Wednesday's press conference at CGV Yongsan in Seoul. "It gets snubbed among the brights, but bring it together with the others and it's a whole different story. I wanted to make a film about people scraping by who find their strength in banding together."Those people are Jung-gu (Ryu Seung-ryong) and Nam-mi (Ha Ji-won), a onetime celebrity power couple, long past their heyday, who stake everything they have left on saving their daughter Dong-ju (Kim Si-ah) after she gets swept up in a shocking incident.The premise's harder edges are familiar territory for the director. Lee broke out in 2018 with "Miss Baek," an unflinching female-driven drama about a child abuse survivor who fights to save a little girl from the same fate. Several of that film's cast members return here, including Kim Si-ah, who played the girl.Shooting wrapped in 2021, but the film spent the next five years in limbo as the Covid-19 pandemic upended release schedules. That's a long stretch even among the country's pandemic-era productions that sat unreleased for years, known locally as warehouse films.Ryu, a scene-stealing mainstay of Korean blockbusters ranging from "Miracle in Cell No. 7" to "Extreme Job," said he initially passed on the project. Lee won him over with what she described as a tearful handwritten letter. Ryoo Seung-ryong stars in "Portrait of a Family.' (Content Zio/Playgram) "The title hooked me, so I read the script out of curiosity," Ryu said. "Jung-gu is rough and unpolished, but his daughter is all he can think about. It's a different shade of fatherhood from anything I've played before. Every dad out there will relate."He had warmer words still for the director's process. "She knows every scene down to the smallest level — the psychology, the purpose, what's underneath each character," he said. "As an actor, I was in good hands."The bigger draw, though, may be his co-star Ha. One of the defining stars of 2000s Korean film and television, the actor has been edging back into the spotlight since launching a YouTube channel earlier this year. This one marks her first big-screen outing in six years. Ha Ji-won (Content Zio/Playgram) "I was happy the whole way through," Ha said of the shoot. "The character is an actress in the film, like myself. She's not overcoming her life so much as enduring it, and playing that broke my heart."The five-year wait, to hear her tell it, is nothing to worry about. "Watch it and you'll feel the weather, the temperature, even the humidity of when we shot it," she said. "It's a story about a family sticking together, so it shouldn't feel dated at all."Kim, reuniting with Lee after making her debut in "Miss Baek," kept her own review of the shoot simple. "Dong-ju's situation is so tragic, it was one hard scene after another," she said. "But the director has kept me steady ever since 'Miss Baek.' All I had to do was act.""Portrait of a Family" opens in Korean theaters Sept. 2.