In this somber Korean drama, a young mother and widow, Shin-ae, moves with her young son, Jun, from Seoul to a small town called Miryang following her husband's death. Having given up on her career as a concert pianist when she married her husband, she starts up a piano school, but soon it begins to feel like the polite people who inhabit her new home aren't as friendly as they seem on the surface. Judgmental whispers and disapproving gossip begin to reach Shin-ae's ears, and pressure to join the Christian cult that thrives in the town begins to mount. She's hesitant until an unimaginable tragedy alters her life forever, setting Shin-ae on a dark path of withdrawal from society as a whole. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine is reminiscent of the melodramas of
Lars von Trier: an intense long-form character study with a novelistic sense of shifting form in a dark, almost cynical tale of awakening. It opens with Lee Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon) lost in her car on the outskirts of Miryang, a Korean town whose name means "Secret Sunshine." She is rescued by bumbling mechanic Kim Jong-chan (Song Kang-ho) who takes an immediate interest in her and helps to set up a piano teaching school in the city. This comfortable setting-in is disrupted after her son is abducted and found dead. For the rest of the movie Lee undergoes a spiritual journey as long term mental breakdown, joining a born again Christian church and then rejecting God through self-abasement.
The narrative and the characters are constantly twisting in unpredictable ways. "There are things you can't see," advises a Christian pharmacist, hinting at the underlying beauty and cruelty within the town. In conservative Miryang the men are callous towards women, insensitive to their emotions. Song, adding layers to the bumbling yet cocky comic persona that has made him a Korean movie star, comes across variously as a puppy dog, stalker, and harmless fool. The open-hearted Christians can be delusional and naïve. Yet all are also capable of acts of generosity. The blue sky which often fills the frame can be oppressive or freeing. Lee weaves these disparate elements into a harmonic whole, ultimately revealing a deeper current that sustains the community.
Yet for all his mastery, Lee has a maddening tendency to overplay his dramatic hand. Similar to his
Oasis, he revels in climatic fits of screaming and risks romanticizing a medical issue (physical handicap in Oasis, a mental breakdown in Secret Sunshine) in the service of a broader message. But insanity is not a road to enlightenment. Jeon's searing and brilliant performance charts her character's breakdown so convincingly it only drives the point home. But to Lee's credit the ending retains an air of mystery as to where life will lead her.
Secret Sunshine was featured in the 45th New York Film Festival and Jeon won the Best Leading Actress award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Michael Buening, All Movie Guide