Poetry

Only a well-subsidised movie industry such as South Korea's could fund a constant stream of sad feature films. They are cinematic joys for their pensive auteurs and angstful actors, and there must be healthy (numerically speaking) national audiences that also derive pleasure from them.

Poetry tells the tearful tale of a suburban-rural village where an ageing woman learns that she has Alzheimer's, and that the selfish grandson in her care is one of the local schoolboys whose regular rape sessions drove a schoolgirl to drown herself. Painfully aware of life's cruelties and its natural beauties, the woman joins a community class to learn about poetry. Its attendees promise to complete one poem by the end of the course. Only she does so, musing wistfully on the girl's death, having turned her grandson over to the local police and decided to kill herself.

Writer-director-producer Lee Chang-dong's mesmerising 2010 study hinges vitally on the lead role played by retired actress Yoon Jeong-hee, making her first movie for 16 years. She's won deserved Asian festival awards, as has Lee (and two at Cannes 2010).