After all of this genre cinema, it’s about time we delved into some serious drama for the Korean cinema blogathon, don’t you think? For our Wednesday contribution, I offer you a review for Peppermint Candy! Not exactly a fun movie, but… wow! Amazing cinema!
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The Plot: Our film begins with a man wandering along the banks of a small creek. We discover that he has stumbled upon his home town after many years of being away, and a small group of old friends are currently partying alongside the water. The man is Kim Yongho (Sol Kyung-gu) and he appears to be under some form of serious stress. He screams and hollers while his old friends try to make conversation with him, before he ultimately wanders off onto the nearby train tracks and positions himself in front of an oncoming train. As the train looks to mow him down, Yongho announces “I’m going back!” which is precisely what we as an audience then do. We travel through Yongho’s life via several pivotal years within his time-line. We see him as an unhappily married man, reeling from the loss of a love that he was never able to attain. We see him disillusioned by the corrupt criminal-justice system that he has become a part of. We see how he became disillusioned and finally we see a love affair that brought out the best memories from his entire life. |