FILM

South Korea 2010 139 mins Subtitles Dir: Chang-dong Lee Starring: Jeong-hie Yun, Da-wit Lee

Tough sells don't get much tougher than a lengthy subtitled film about a sixtysomething woman with Alzheimer's who decides to become a poet. OK, so there's an (offscreen) gang rape and a suicide too, but Chang-dong Lee's meandering film is in equal parts frustrating and moving, with more than its fair share of longueurs (mostly the scenes of amateur poetry recitals).

It opens with the corpse of a schoolgirl floating gently downstream. We then meet elegant and well-preserved if somewhat befuddled sexagenarian Mija (excellent veteran Jeong-hie Yun), who's raising her surly, layabout ingrate of a teenage grandson, Wook (Da-wit Lee), while working part time as a carer for a randy old gent who's suffered a stroke. She's also signed up for a poetry class, where she struggles with the notion of poetic inspiration - which, it transpires, is acquired through intense contemplation of fruit. Turns out the dead 16-year-old girl was a classmate of Wook's who committed suicide after being repeatedly raped by him and five of his buddies. Now the fathers of the other boys have got together to hush up the crime, the plan being to pay off the girl's single mother in order to protect their sons' futures and the school's reputation.

This male conspiracy is the film's most interesting element, as Mija finds herself unwillingly press-ganged into finding her share of 30 million won (that's about £17,500, fact fans). The bullying men are mostly wealthy, while the girl - sneeringly dismissed as "short and unattractive" by one of the fathers - comes from a poor farming family. But in avoiding cliché, Lee also makes fragile Mija difficult to read as she faces her moral dilemma. Despite some powerful moments, his film struggles to engage. (Robin Askew)

website www.kino.com/poetry/

Opens: July 29

Copyright Robin Askew 2011