Peppermint Candy (박하사탕, Bakha Satang)

Wednesday 17 September at 7.30pm

Lee Chang-dong | South Korea | 1999 | 130 mins | R16 violence, sexual material, suicide & offensive language

This powerful and compassionate early feature by novelist-turned-director Lee Chang-dong examines Korea’s turbulent recent past through the life of one desperate man.

“Peppermint Candy spans 20 years—from 1979 to 1999—in the life of its protagonist Yong-ho, from naïve and optimistic adolescence to venomous, self-hating middle age… Filmmaker Lee Chang-dong makes it clear that Yong-ho is in large part responsible for his own moral and spiritual decay, but he identifies one traumatic episode (his military service at the time of the Kwangju massacre in 1980) as a trigger and assigns a pernicious supporting role to the state’s culture of authoritarianism and corruption. It adds up to a devastating indictment of the many mistakes Korea has made as it lurches towards democracy, but the focus on one man (brilliantly played by Sul Kyung-gu, who shot to stardom overnight) gives the film a very humane dramatic centre. Better yet, the inspired decision to tell the story in reverse chronology turns the film into a very moving and sometimes very disturbing quest for Yong-ho’s lost innocence.”—Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival 2000