Since making Oasis in 2002 Lee Chang-Dong has served for a couple of years as Korea’s Minister of Culture, and it’s interesting to speculate what bearing his experience of high office has had on Secret Sunshine, a devastating account of a woman’s mental turmoil. Lee Shin-Ae (played with scalding intensity by Jeon Do-Yeon: Best Actress, Cannes) moves to her husband’s home town Miryang--the name means “Secret Sunshine”-- after his death in a road accident. Estranged from most of her own family and her in-laws, she’s determined to make a fresh start. She sends her young son Jun to school and opens a piano academy, fending off romantic overtures from a car-workshop owner (Song Kang-Ho, The Host) and "spiritual" overtures from a local Christian group. Then tragedy strikes again and she falls to pieces; her life becomes a vortex of hatred and forgiveness, faith and nihilism, composure and hysteria.

The word “gripping” is always over-used in blurbs, but it’s the right one here. Lee (who won our Dragons & Tigers award with his debut feature Green Fish) enters his character’s world with unsparing vehemence, taking the viewer to the very heart of an emotional breakdown and a fragile recovery. Bresson and Buñuel would likely both have admired the extraordinary achievement.

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