A slow-burning mystery about economics, class, and sexual jealousy. And cats.

In his first film in eight years, writer/director Lee Chang-dong (Oasis; Secret Sunshine; Poetry) begins this protean narrative as an almost John Hughes-esque teen romance, before shifting gears into a story of sexual and economic jealousy, then morphing into the tale of a pseudo-film noir amateur sleuth, before finally allowing itself to visit the thriller territory that has lurked just outside the frame since the opening few scenes. Essentially, it's a psychological drama about three people. Although, it's possible that only one of those people is real. There are also two cats. Or maybe only one cat. It's a long journey (148 minutes), and, for some, the payoff will not be worth the length of time taken to get there. Others, more used to concrete black-and-white yes-and-no narratives, will be unimpressed with how steadfastly the film refuses to yield its secrets. For myself, it's a two-and-a-half-hour movie with only three characters of which to speak (real or not) that is intimately tied to a milieu I'm completely unfamiliar with, yet it managed to hold my attention for almost the entire time. It has an undeniable ability to burrow under your skin very early on, so even though in the first two hours, there are literally only two major plot points, I was fully invested. And, man alive, is it tense. Lee's mastery of tone is quite something, keeping the viewer off-balance from the get-go, bestowing portentous significance upon the most inanimate and innocent of objects, only to later reveal that whilst we were trying to figure out the importance of item a, we missed the significance of item b. And although in the last half-hour, I did start to fidget a little, I thought the ending was wonderfully ambiguous (albeit, just a tad predictable).

For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/DoHpn