Directed by Lee Chang-dong. Starring Yoon Jeong-hee Club, QFT, Belfast; IFI, Dublin, 139 min
YOU’D NEVER guess it from the neat arrangement of her hats and floral scarves, but 66-year-old Mija (Yoon Jeong-he) is a woman in a hurry. A patient caregiver to an elderly stroke victim and a kindly guardian to her sullen teenage grandson, the heroine of this affecting tragedy has apparently never considered me-time.
A diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's, handed down in Poetry's opening scenes, inspires Mija to seek a creative outlet in an adult poetry-writing class. "I do have a poet's vein," she says. "I do like flowers and say odd things."
Pay close attention; the South Korean winner of the Best Screenplay Award at last year’s Cannes is no mere asinine tale of self-improvement. Mija’s enrolment in the poetry class coincides with the death of a local girl. A diary reveals the teenager has committed suicide following months of serial rape at the hands of five classmates, including Mija’s own grandson.
The other boys’ fathers soon make contact and agree to pay the victim’s family compensation in lieu of a trial and a scandal. Mija remains silent as the men discuss the dead girl in terms befitting livestock. She remains silent as the men treat her with condescension.
Mija’s struggle to speak out against the injustice is mirrored by a struggle to find poetic inspiration, and the director’s otherwise delicate screenplay makes it plain that one will not happen without the other.
There is something of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeabout the erratic detective story that follows. Mija's increasingly dreamlike state is ill suited to gumshoe work, though her invisibility and irrelevance allow her to move around gathering evidence unnoticed. There's something, too, of the incoming We Need to Talk About Kevin in Mija's incomprehension of her grandson's actions.
Poetry’s repeated juxtaposition of kitchen-sink grime and lyrical tableaux highlights Mija’s otherworldliness and the film’s preoccupation with ways of seeing. Yoon Jeong-hee’s dazzling central turn comes to resemble a prism through which her unassuming life can be glimpsed anew.
Avenging K-movie heroines are seldom so endearingly contemplative.
