Lee Chang-dong's singular 2002 melodrama, Oasis, centers on two people cast out by society. Hong Jong-du (Sol Kyung-gu) returns to Seoul after a two-and-a-half year prison term for involuntary manslaughter to find that his family has moved without telling him. Jong-du, crude and jittery, dines, dashes, and spits off buildings for fun. His mental age is that of a child. When he locates his family, his sister-in-law doesn't mince words. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but I really don't like you," though his brother, Jong-il (Ahn Nae-sang), lines him up with a job as a delivery man.
While attempting to apologize to the man whose father he killed, Jong-du meets his sister, Gong-ju (Moon So-ri reuniting with Lee and Sol after 1999 time-reverse character study Peppermint Candy), who has cerebral palsy and has trouble talking and controlling her impulses. But for all his faults, Jong-du isn't especially judgmental, and she sparks his interest, so he visits her after her family largely abandons her--an experience he knows all too well. They've only known each other for a few days, however, before he sexually assaults her. He won't do it again, but it's a major betrayal of her trust and vulnerability.
In her loneliness, Gong-ju encourages rather than rejects Jong-du's companionship. Since her name means "princess" in Korean, he calls her "Your Highness," while she calls him "General" after a military ancestor. In daydreams, she gets out of her wheelchair, relaxes her face and limbs, and escapes from reality. She also imagines the sparkles produced by a hand mirror turning into butterflies and the oasis tapestry on her wall coming to life with an elephant and Indian dancers tossing rose petals.
In real life, everyone looks at Jong-du and Gong-ju disapprovingly when they go out in public. His uptight, intolerant family is the worst of all, especially Jong-il, who takes advantage of his mental deficits--and even beats him on occasion. When the couple's relationship turns willingly intimate, one family has Jong-du arrested, and both do all they can to keep them apart.
As a filmmaker, Lee has a great deal of sympathy for individuals Korean society tends to ignore or dismiss, but he has no interest in easy sentimentality or pat solutions, a staple of American studio pictures on similar themes. Jong-du and Gong-ju are flawed characters who don't always make the best decisions, but they deserve compassion, romance, and even sex as much as anyone.
Though some viewers may find Jong-du's betrayal of Gong-ju's trust hard to forgive, he immediately recognizes the error of his ways, and Lee would take an unambiguously hard line regarding sexual assault in his 2010 film Poetry, in which a young rape victim's determined, if declining elderly neighbor will do whatever it takes to get justice when local authorities fail to act.
A former novelist and one-time Korean Minister of Culture, Lee Chang-dong has only directed six features since 1997 with nary a disappointment among the lot. Though Oasis is hardly an easy watch, it's invaluable as an empowering and uniquely romantic narrative about disabled individuals, something still too infrequently represented on screen. At the 59th Venice Film Festival, Lee won the Silver Lion for director and Moon So-ri won the Silver Lion for her visceral, transformative performance.
What type of library programming could use this title? Can this film be used in a library education program?
Oasis could be used in library programming on contemporary Korean cinema or the representations of disability on screen.
What kind of film series would this film fit in?
Oasis would fit with a film series on the work of Lee Chang-dong whose first four features are all available in 4K restorations through Film Movement. His most recent, Burning, a riveting adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story, was released in 2018.