Oasis

Directed by Lee Chang-Dong
Film Movement Classics
2002
133 Minutes
South Korea
Korean
Drama, Romance, Asian, Classics
Not Rated
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Fresh out of prison, Hong Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu) finds an unlikely soulmate in Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), the daughter of the victim of the hit-and-run accident for which he went to jail. Wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe cerebral palsy, Gong-ju is kept cloistered in a cheap apartment by her brother, whose only concern is the government assistance she receives. Over a series of clandestine meetings, the two begin an improbable relationship that defies the judgment and cruelty of the world around them.

Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director and Best Young Actress at the Venice Film Festival, Lee Chang-dong's OASIS is a “brave film” that “shows two people who find any relationship almost impossible, and yet find a way to make theirs work” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). Presented in a new 4K restoration.

Cast

  • Sol Kyung-gu
  • Moon So-ri
  • Highest Rating
    "Critic's Pick! The remarkable ... ''Oasis'' strips away much of the sentimentality and goody-two-shoes attitudes that the movies traditionally display toward disabled people. At the same time, it coolly indicts an indifferent world that treats its misfits as inconvenient, half-witted children who are easily exploited and abused. The film's extraordinary lead performers refuse to soft-pedal the severity of the characters' afflictions."
    Stephen Holden, The New York Times
  • Highest Rating
    "A brave film in the way it shows two people who find any relationship almost impossible, and yet find a way to make theirs work."
    Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Highest Rating
    "Lee's humanitarian plea for tolerance is one of the most original films of the decade, and Moon provides the soul."
    G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
  • Highest Rating
    "A love story of two young people marginalized by family and society that becomes a scorching indictment of the indifference, cruelty and hypocrisy of those institutions as the couple inevitably come into profound conflict with them."
    Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
  • Highest Rating
    "Take my word for it: Oasis is one of the most deeply felt love stories of the screen in ways that you must endure a little suffering of your own to appreciate."
    Andrew Sarris, Observer
  • Highest Rating
    "You'll have to look long and hard to find a performance as emotionally raw as that of Moon So-ri."
    V.A. Musetto, New York Post
  • Highest Rating
    "No movie in recent memory has translated so clearly the secret language of lovers normally lost on the rest of the world."
    Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
  • Highest Rating
    "A loving and lovely film."
    Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News
  • Highest Rating
    "Lee effortlessly creates a dense social context for his star-crossed lovers, from the bookending sojourns to the unforgiving police station to one of cinema’s most discomfiting and confrontational extended-family dinner scenes, but the film remains unnervingly intimate, because Lee is simply more attentive to his characters’ emotional tumult than to the audience’s, come hell or high water."
    Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

Awards & Recognition

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