By Some Movie NewsLee Chang-dong makes films about the space between wanting something and admitting it. His characters carry desire like evidence of a flaw. The class divide is always structural.
He returns to Venice this September for the first time in 24 years. Before he does, these are the four films that trace where he has been.
Lee won the Silver Lion for Best Director here; Moon So-ri won the Marcello Mastroianni Award. The film built the template: an impossible attachment across class and circumstance, made tender without apology.
Jeon Do-yeon won Best Actress at Cannes for her performance as a widow rebuilding in a town she has no connection to. The grief is specific; the religion is treated with neither contempt nor comfort.
An elderly woman discovers poetry while her grandson is implicated in a crime. Lee won Best Screenplay at Cannes for a script that never lets its characters off the hook.
Adapted from Haruki Murakami, with Steven Yeun as a man whose hobby may be arson. Won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 2018; the class anxiety runs at a frequency you feel rather than see.
His Venice return, 24 years after Oasis: two couples with opposite lives, a forbidden attraction, a Netflix theatrical release on October 23. The four films above are the reason this one matters.
lee chang-dong is back at venice after 24 years. these 4 films are where his sensibility lives #KoreanCinema #SomeMovieNews @zoinsung_official @lightyears81
lee chang-dong at venice after 24 years. these 4 films explain why possible love matters #KoreanCinema #SomeMovieNews @JoInSungOfficia
