SFIFF: Sa-Kwa May 1, 2006

Winner of the FIPRESCI award at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and a screenwriting award at San Sebastian, this sensitive debut feature from Kang Yi-Kwan stars Moon So-Ri, who gave amazing performances as a young girl with cerebral palsy in Oasis (SFIFF 2003) and as the title character in A Good Lawyer's Wife (2003). Here she plays Hyun-Jung, a young office worker suddenly abandoned by her longtime boyfriend. Still grieving, she relents to the persistent and conventional wooing of another man, finally marrying him and giving birth to a son. At the same time she contemplates divorcing him and reuniting with her old boyfriend, who shows up too frequently for coincidence. Try as she might to be independent, she is loath to shut out her family, as seen in some remarkably moving and affectionate scenes with her parents. The highlight of this film is yet another extraordinary turn by Moon So-Ri, whose physicality sets her apart from her contemporaries and brings a nuanced intensity to the portrait of a young woman who tries to tease out what she wants from her life and her men. A deeply rewarding, delicately observant look at modern love and marriage, Sa-Kwa's title is a Korean homonym for ?apple? and ?apology,? which shows up in the final cut of the film only in the form of a green apple that Hyun-Jung sends off with the man who wants her back.

?Frako Loden

Presented in association with the Institute of East Asian Studies. SKYY Prize Contender. Sponsored by Hotel Adagio; Hotel Carlton; and Hotel Rex.

Official Website: http://fest06.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=79