3-Iron (review)

Kim Ki-duk's follow-up to his beautifully, expressively quiet Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring is another film that is beautifully, expressively quiet in a completely different way. Tae-suk (Jae Hee) walks on the outermost edges of city society, a modern Goldilocks who breaks into houses and apartments while the inhabitants are away, sleeping in their beds and washing in their showers and examining with genuine curiosity the ephemera of their lives, like family photos. He's not a thief -- he steals nothing and actually "pays" for his stay by performing little chores -- but he's much more removed from ordinary decent humanity than even a criminal is: Not only does he speak to no one, he doesn't even interact with others. Until he meets Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon) in a house that's not as empty as he thought it was. Well, he interacts with her, as she joins him on his urban peregrinations, but neither of them talk, even to each other. With his astonishing eye for the most minute and most telling of human behaviors, and how they reflect how we feel, Kim paints an extraordinary picture of the gulfs and bridges between disaffection and connectedness, the weightiness of material possessions, and how hiding in the shadows can be the freest way to live.