Peppermint Candy

Directed by Lee Chang-Dong

Film Movement Classics

1999

129 Minutes

South Korea

Korean

Drama, Classics, Asian

Library Pricing:

DVD $150.00

Blu-ray $150.00

PPR $350.00

DRL $499.00

PPR+DRL $599.00

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Yongho (Sul Kyung-gu) stares down an oncoming train as twenty years of his life flash before his eyes. Proceeding to move backward in time, Lee’ Chang-dong's acclaimed second directorial feature rewinds the protagonist's loss of humanity - from his fraught, self-hating middle age through his callow teens. The moments in between these events, as seen through the lens of Yongho’s oppressive struggles, mirror South Korea’s traumatic political history during the late 20th century.

An official selection of the Directors' Fortnight selection in Cannes and winner of the Special Prize of the Jury at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, PEPPERMINT CANDY is a powerful work of Korean New Wave cinema that elegizes a generation of marginalized people with “quiet, heartbreaking power” (The New York Times). Presented in a new 4K restoration.

Cast

Sol Kyung-gu
Moon So-ri
Kim Yeo-jin

Highest Rating
"The end has a quiet, heartbreaking power..."

A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Highest Rating
"It’s a scathing critique of an entire generation of Korean men, as well as of the country’s institutional default settings as it transformed itself into a democracy, but because it’s Lee’s film, it is Peppermint Candy’s ineluctable shape and pounding melancholy that leaves an ax gash on your memory."

Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
Highest Rating
"Striking, poignant, sad, and uncompromising as ever, Peppermint Candy is a film that stays with you…"

Andrew Heskins, EasternKicks.com
Highest Rating
"A raw work that’s like diving into a festering wound. In a good way."

Josh Slater-Williams, Little White Lies
Highest Rating
"This is Korea's millennial elegy, filtering its search for times past through a confection no less bittersweet than Proust's madeleine."

Anton Bitel, Projected Figures
Highest Rating
"The film offers a heartbreaking drama told in reverse chronology and spanning twenty years in both the life of the main character and the political history of Korea."

Beth Accomando, KPBS.org
Highest Rating
"Peppermint Candy laid the groundwork for the polished, more covertly political dramas about marginalized Koreans — be it by age, ability or affluence — that cemented Lee’s auteur label a few years later: Oasis, Secret Sunshine and Poetry."

Elizabeth Kerr, The Hollywood Reporter
Highest Rating
"Peppermint Candy is a compelling and powerful work and necessary to any introduction to the Korean New Wave. "

Rahul Hamid, Senses of Cinema