The Isle

In Kim Ki-Duk's The Isle, the setting is a remote Korean lake covered with floating huts used by fishermen. When the mist roles in, the huts appear to have no mooring in the corporeal world. The same is true of the writer-director's characters, a near-mute prostitute (Suh Jung) and a guilt-stricken former cop (Kim Yoo-Suk): people who have been dealt such a brutal hand by life that they respond to the first blooms of love with obsession and sadism rather than tenderness. While the fishing village allows for beautiful imagery, what the audience will remember are the moments of extreme sexual violence (knives and fishhooks play a prominent role in scenes that range from savage to hypnotic). Yet, even at its most harrowing (and certain scenes are so grotesque as to be nigh unwatchable), the director punctures the events with pitch black humor (and it's telling that Korean censors take issue with explicit passion, but allow the wealth of scatology and mutilation that fuel this doomed affair). Ultimately, the murky cycle of love and self-destruction leaves the film with nowhere to go, yielding an end that is more whimper than bang. Optional. (D. Fienberg)