So this is a 2007 Korean film by Lee Chang-dong, the director of Burning, and is mostly (in a very roundabout way) a movie about religion and grief.

Our protagonist and her young son move from Seoul to a smaller city; a good chunk of the running time of the first bit is her finding her place in the city and meeting people and all that; since I hadn’t read a summary or anything beforehand, I wasn’t sure what genre of movie this even was. Burning was kind of a relationship movie and also kind of a murder movie; turns out that this is also both.

Because after a certain point, tragedy strikes: She’s out at karaoke, having left her son home alone. He’s like… eight? nine?… and I was all, “uh, wtf, that kid’s too young to be left alone, lady” and turns out I was right in an unexpected way, because he’s kidnapped and, it will later come out, murdered. The guy who did it is caught and goes to jail, but… her son is still dead.

And now we get into the main part of the movie, which is how she deals with grief. She had earlier met a pharmacist who was pushing Christian tracts at her, and she now goes to that church in her desperation, and… finds that it helps. She finds — with an eerie suddenness — a kind of calm tranquility. And she’s determined to go see the guy who killed her son and forgive him. Y’know, like Christians are supposed to do.

People around her are like “uh… look, we get it, but are you sure?” and she is sure. So they go to the prison, and she meets him, and explains that she’s found religion… but before she can forgive him, he’s all, “oh good, me too, as soon as I went to jail, I prayed and God granted me forgiveness and absolution, and now I feel at peace, so great being forgiven by GOD HIMSELF, haha, awesome.”

And as he’s giving this speech, you can see her serenity crumbling, because of course, forgiveness wasn’t God’s to give, she’s the injured party here. And so she leaves with her faith shaken, and now even more wounded both by the tragedy of her son’s death and the sudden loss of her coping mechanism.

The next part of the movie is her trying to get revenge on God: She sabotages the music at a big preaching event, she seduces the husband of the pharmacist lady, she throws a rock through a window of a prayer vigil, and then, staring up at the sky in rebellion, she cuts herself pretty badly.

And oh, remember how I said it was sort of a relationship movie? Well, there’s this doofy loser guy (played by Song Kang-ho, the dad of the poor family in Parasite) who met her early on and has clearly had a thing for her, and… she’s not really interested, but also doesn’t know many other people in her new city, so she ends up going to him for help a few times early on; and basically he thinks he’s in a romcom, but isn’t. And after the son is killed… he keeps acting like he’s in a romcom, trying to get her to go on dates with him and the like, and there’s a lot of intentionally dissonant juxtaposition of him waiting at a restaurant for her while she’s standing him up to bang that lady’s husband and piss off God. Even as she is increasingly visibly Not Doing Well, he’s still just trying to Nice Guy her.

So anyway, after her cutting incident, she goes to a mental hospital, and then she’s released, seeming flat and unreactive to both her brother (who came to town just to see her out) and doofy guy’s “hey, cool, you’re all better now” overtures in a way that makes you really wonder how much better she really is. The brother gets dropped off at the train station, and doofy guy tells her that he made reservations for dinner (see what I mean about really not picking up on what’s happening), but she begs off because she wants a haircut first. He takes her to a salon, where her haircutter ends up being the daughter of the murderer, and… she can’t handle it, it feels like God playing a joke on her. She leaves in the middle of the haircut, to run home. She starts cutting her own hair, and doofy guy eventually shows up, smiling, to hold the mirror for her as she does. The end.

I’ve seen reviews that refer to it as a triumphant ending, like hey, she got through everything and she has her budding relationship with this guy, yahtzee. And I’ve seen reviews that refer to it as a tragic ending — she’s still very clearly suffering from deep trauma and her closest “friend” is this oblivious needy guy who desperately wants her as his girlfriend and barely even notices what’s going on with her. The latter seems like a lot more defensible reading, tbh.

Overall a good movie; the pacing is more than slightly weird — it goes on for most of an hour before the son’s murder, which is really almost the inciting plot event in the thing — but, idk, even the “irrelevant” part of her settling into the city was compelling. By far the strongest element of this one is the performances, particularly from the lead actress, Jeon Do-yeon, who won an award at Cannes for this role (apparently the first/only time a Korean actress won that award). She does an amazing job, somehow managing to both be very subtle and naturalistic, while also making the character’s interiority clear without the benefit of any real monologues or “this is what I’m feeling” conversations.