Poetry

It's fair to say that the subject-matter... is likely to be a hard sell, but the quality of the film is such that it simply demands an airing.

True to the title, writer-director Lee Chang-dong is principally concerned with rendering emotions that seem inexpressible.

Those with an eye for reading between the lines can find layers of meaning.

A deceptively gentle tale with a tender ache at its center, as well as a performance from Yun Jung-hee that lingers long in the memory.

In the way of good cinema, the full experience is entirely unsentimental and poetic.

It is a picture of something inexpressibly gentle and sad, something heartbreaking and absolutely normal, but something stirred up by a violent, alien incursion.

That untapped potential and creativity lurking even within ordinary people is the overriding theme of Lee's achingly poignant film.

Yun gives us a lifetime in a few hours.

Strongly recommended for the patient and contemplative, as is usual with the works of Lee Chang-dong.

This layered, lyrical drama from Korean director Lee Chongdong focuses on a Mija (Yun Junghee), a woman in her 60s whose life of quiet dignity meets a moral crossroads as a variety of unrelated events intersect.