SECRET SUNSHINE (MILYANG) World Cinema

Lee Chang-Dogn’s movie possesses the fullness and complexity of a great novel, revealing new layers to us the deeper we move into it. It begins as the story of a recent widow (Jeon Do-yeon) and her young son adjusting to their new lives in a small town that suddenly, without warning, becomes a thriller and then a Bressonian study in human suffering.

Lee guides SECRET SUNSHINE though these switchblade reversals of comedy and despair, darkness and light with remarkable agility. To say more would be to compromise the film’s many surprises.

But a few words are owed to Jeon, winner of Cannes’ Best Actor prize. Continuously onscreen, she fearlessly navigates the movie’s turbulent emotional currents, slowly revealing the extraordinary inner strength and grace of a seemingly fragile, uncertain woman. And we begin to behold a saintly figure cast down from the heavens.