Peppermint Candy
Asian Cinema
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2h 10m
Leaving November 1
Directed by Lee Chang-dong | 130 mins | 1999
Opening on a shocking scene of implied suicide, Lee’s sophomore feature proceeds to move backward in time, its reverse chronology following its protagonist’s unhappiness to its source, following him from the end of the ’70s to the close of the ’90s—years of enormous transformation in South Korea—and on a trajectory from youthful romanticism to the cynicism and disenchantment of middle age. A character study that doubles as an allegorical history of a South Korea beset by trauma after trauma, anchored by Sul Kyung-gu’s sensitive and versatile central performance.
Up Next in Asian Cinema
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Oasis
Leaving November 1
Directed by Lee Chang-dong | 133 mins | 2002
Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu), just out of prison, very little reformed, and shunned by his family, finds an unlikely soulmate in the person of Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), a woman with severe cerebral palsy—and the daughter of the victim of t... -
Hahaha
Leaving October 1
Directed by Hong Sangsoo | 115 mins | 2010
Two friends in a bar trade stories about their romantic exploits at a beach, which we come to realize involve the same people (including a restaurant owner played by Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung). Through adroit layering, Hong brings ... -
Hill of Freedom
Directed by Hong Sangsoo | 66 mins | 2014
The progress through a hopelessly shuffled stack of love letters inspires the a-chronological structure of Hong’s Hill of Freedom, which describes the terse long-distance relationship between a Korean woman and the Japanese man who has built an ardent ro...
