7/10
3 stars
14 May 2002
This isn't a film about plot, so I'll concentrate on describing the main characters. Sang-Woo is a single sound engineer living with his family. Eun-su is a radio show host who lives about 4 hours away, by herself in a small, somewhat messy apartment. They meet to record the sound of wind in a bamboo forest for her radio show, and a relationship develops between them. The film observes them over the course of the changing seasons in Korea, starting in the Spring both in terms of the calendar and their relationship.

The pace is deliberate, and the characters don't really change much, but the film is beautiful and, not surprisingly, lovely to listen to, and it's definitely worth seeing. I think that the male lead (Ji-tae Yu) is particularly good in his role. My understanding is that the film won the top prize at Korea's equivalent to the Academy Awards.

I saw this at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 4/21/2002, where an earlier showing was the U.S. premiere. The director was present to answer questions, through an interpreter, and one of his responses indicated that viewers who are more experienced in love tend to identify with the female lead, while those less experienced see themselves in the male character.
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