Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/11/2016)

Opening proceedings is Lee Kyoung-mi's The Truth Beneath, which sees the sophomore director return eight years after she debuted with Crush and Blush. That was produced by Park Chan-wook and he co-scripts this taut thriller, which reveals much about the macho nature of Korean politics in showing how former news anchor Kim Joo-hyuk places his campaign to oust Daeson rival Kim Eui-song above a family crisis. Yet, while he keeps telling voters that children come first, he delays reporting the fact that teenage daughter Shin Ji-hoon has vanished because she is so key to his public image.

Son Ye-jin has backed her husband at every turn. But, as election day dawns, she decides to take matters into her own hands and trawls through Shin's e-mails to find clues to her whereabouts. She also tracks down classmate Kim So-hee and teacher Choi Yu-hwa to see if they have any insights. The more she searches, however, the more she comes to suspect that the Korea Party machinery is behind the disappearance and that Kim knows more than he is letting on.

This has been the year of the ballot and Lee and Park (in conjunction with Jung Seo-kyung, Kim Da-young and Jung So-young) probe the dark underbelly of the South Korean establishment in this tense and disconcerting tale. Hong Ju-hee's production design and Ju Sung-him's camerawork enhance the growing sense of unease, as the excellent Son Ye-jin comes closer to the unforgivable truth by exposing the corruption and depravity at the heart of Kim Joo-hyuk's campaign team.

Kim also headlines the closing gala, as Hang Sang-soo explores notions of identity in Yourself and Yours. Painter Kim is worried about the health of his mother, But neighbout Kim Eui-sung informs him that girlfriend Lee You-young has been out boozing and when he confronts her about the rumour, she is deeply hurt and stalks out. Shortly afterwards, writer Kwon Hae-hyo greets Lee in a coffee shop. But she denies knowing him and film-maker Yu Jun-sang has a similar experience at a bar. Thus, by the time Kim catches up with Lee, it's hard to tell if she has multiple personalities or numerous lookalikes. But, knowing Hang, the whole thing could just be a stylistic charade designed to explore the nature of narrative and psychological truth.

Moving into the `Hits 2015/16' selection, fans of Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan will want to catch his animated prequel, Seoul Station, which shows how the zombie epidemic started with a homeless man whose rampage coincides with a father's bid to save his daughter from her pimp boyfriend. Abusive violence also plays a part in Jung Ji-woo's Fourth Place, as Park Hae-jun, the former bad boy of Korean swimming, resorts to tough coaching tactics when Lee Hang-na asks him to realise the potential of son Yoo Jae-sang, who keeps missing the podium in his intercollegiate races.

Debutant Choi Jeong-yeol presents a seething variation on the rite of passage theme in One Way Trip, a noirish study of venal celebrity and the fissures that exist in even the closest friendships. All seems well as Kim Jun-myeon (aka pop singer Suho) heads to the southern port town of Pohang to say goodbye to his buddies before doing his two-year military service. He plans to skip college to support his grandmother, but Kim Hee-chan is about to go to university on a baseball scholarship (despite hating the game), while mummy's boy Ryu Jun-yeol and the troubled Ji-soo have yet to make definitive plans.

As they party, the pals see a couple arguing in a parked car. When they try to intervene to help Lee Ji-yeon, a police car speeds to the spot and not only is the husband killed, but Suho is left in a coma. But, rather than thanking her rescuers, Lee (who is a popular TV personality) decides to put reputation before truth and she accuses the quartet of attacking them. Instead of presenting a united front, however, Kim, Ryu and Ji begin to fall out, as they allow pent-up resentments to cloud their judgement.

Briskly directed, unsettlingly photographed by Lee Hyung-bin and admirably played by a youthful cast, this is as much a critique of Korean social mores than a straightforward thriller. In addition to exposing the effect of the class differences between the embattled foursome, Choi also tackles family expectation, the need to save face, the sense of entitlement that comes with fame and the pressures facing an overworked and understaffed police force. But, while Choi capably captures the growing fear of the trio in custody, he overdoes the flashbacks filling in the backstories.

Another first-timer makes a decent impression, as Lee Il-hyung goes behind bars for a fascinating study of injustice and criminal intuition in A Violent Prosecutor. This may not possess the most plausible of plotlines, but it is played with such conviction by its superstar leads that it sweeps the audience along with a canny appreciation of prison politics that recalls Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2009).

Maverick lawyer Hwang Jung-min has built his reputation on displays of bristling bravura in his chambers and in the courtroom. But he has made enemies along the way and boss Lee Sung-min disowns Hwang when he is jailed for 15 years for murdering a gangster who had been accused of beating a cop during an eco demonstration. Denied the chance to appeal and repeatedly roughed up on the orders of a warden in cahoots with his foes, Hwang lowers his profile and becomes the prison savant.

Five years on, Hwang has ingratiated himself with guards and inmates alike by providing free legal advice. But, when he overhears con man Gang Dong-won spouting the kind of green rhetoric with which he became familiar during his own trial, Hwang discovers that he was set up by a sinister cartel of lawyers, businessmen and politicians and begins to groom Gang so he can infiltrate his foes and exact Hwang's revenge.

Although the byplay between Hwang and Gang is splendid, the older actor often steals the scene with his artful scheming and flamboyant outbursts. But Gang shifts shape amusingly as he carries out Hwang's orders as a prudish lawyer, a heartbroken lover and a brash American playboy. Yet, while this caper is slickly scripted and often rousingly entertaining, it never quite hits the right balance between comic set-pieces and simmering revenge drama.

Hwang Jung-min is also to the fore in Asura: The City of Madness, which sees director Kim Sung-soo reunite with favourite actor Jung Woo-sung for a fourth time after Beat (1997), City of the Rising Sun (1998) and Musa: The Warrior (2001). Taking its title from the Indian demigods whose dark desires kept them permanently at loggerheads, this is an uncompromising trawl through the sordid world of local government that suggests those entrusted with making and upholding South Korean law are no better than criminals.

As mayor of the fictional city of Annam, Hwang Jung-min is keen to make a tidy profit from developing the US Army base that is about to be vacated. However, his rivals on the local council are already investigating him for electoral fraud and the heat intensifies when corrupt cop Jung Woo-sung is pegged by prosecutor Kwon Do-won after a key witness is eliminated.

As the half-brother of Jung's dying wife, Kwon is no paragon himself. Indeed, he is in the pay of Hwang's foes and is prepared to blackmail Jung in return for evidence that will ensnare Hwang. But Jung enjoys the proceeds of his misdeeds and persuades rookie partner Ju Ji-hun to aid Hwang until he can get Kwon off his back. However, Ju settles into his new role with ruthless ease and Jung is left uncertain which way to jump as the balance of power shifts.

Despite running the risk of spiralling out of control as Ju seeks to impress Hwang with acts of pitiless cruelty, this still exerts quite a grip and leaves one wondering what on earth is happening to the world's political classes - or has it always been like this and do naive liberals need to wake up and smell the acrid stench of reality? Having broken the box-office record for an R-rated picture, this clearly resonated with Koreans tired of a contentious domestic situation. But Kim and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae generate a churning noirish atmosphere of graft and brutality, while also making a neat job of the car chase and the funeral parlour denouement. Moreover, the cacklingly wicked Hwang and the miscalculatingly cynical Jung revel in their contrasting studies of calculating greed, ambition and amorality.

The tone is equally sombre and uncompromising in Lee Woo-chuls The Hunt, which continues a vogue for quest films that started with Kim Han-min's War of the Arrows (2011) and Park Hoon-jung's The Tiger: An Old Hunter's Tale (2015). Set in a bleak rural locale, the action centres on Ahn Sung-ki, a coal miner who devotes his time to hunting in the mountains after an accident at the pit. However, rumours of a gold strike have brought prospectors to the remote mountain region and Ahn finds himself in peril after he witnesses Cho Jin-woong push Han Ye-ri off a cliff in order to lay claim to her potentially gold-rich land.

By contrast with this polished, if formulaic update of the kind of chase scenario that once informed dozens of Hollywood Westerns, Jo Sung-hee's The Phantom Detective is a stylised retro-noir reworking of the Joseon dynasty novel, Hong Gil-dong, in which the eponymous hero uses his supernatural and intellectual powers to right wrongs and bring the rich to book. Here, Hong (Lee Je-Hoon) runs an illegal detective agency with President Hwang (Go Ara). But, while he is usually able to apprehend suspects with alacrity, Kim Byeong-Duk (Park Geun-Hyung) has evaded his grasp since he saw him kill his mother when he was eight years old. He vows to bring him to justice. Yet, when Kim is kidnapped, Hong agrees to help granddaughters Dong-Yi (Roh Jeong-Eui) and Mal-Soon (Kim Ha-Na) track him down, even if it means locking horns with the sinister Gwangeunhwe company.

The visuals are also the strong suit in Lee Joon-ik's Dong-ju: The Portrait of a Poet, a monochrome biopic set during the latter stages of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. But, for all the sombre beauty of Choi Yong-Jin's photography, Shin Yeon-shick's screenplay struggles to accommodate a cumbersome framing story that serves to sentimentalise its central study in friendship and courage.

In 1943, Yun Dong-ju (Kang Ha-neul) is arrested as a thought criminal and brought to the Kamogawa Police Station in Kyoto, where he is interrogated by a Japanese detective (Kim In-woo). He is asked about the contents of his own verses. But the inquisitor is much more interested in Dong-ju's friendship with Song Mong-gyu (Park Jung-min), a fellow writer who is suspected of having links to the Korean resistance.

Thinking back to their first meeting at elementary school, Dong-ju recalls how Mong-gyu used to encourage his interest in poetry. Yet, no matter how lyrically he wrote, he always disappointed his father, Yun Yeong-seok (Choi Hong-il), by missing out on school prizes because of the force of Mong-gyu's essay writing. Shunning his father's insistence he becomes a doctor, Dong-ju is distressed by the proclamation ordering all Koreans to assume Japanese names and tears up his application form.

However, Mong-gyu wishes to go beyond such quiet acts of passive resistance and persuades Dong-ju to attend university in Tokyo so that he can use his student status to infiltrate Japanese military circles and supply his comrades in the underground with valuable information to aid their fight. But, in showing such loyalty to his friend, Dong-ju finds himself coming under increasing suspicion, especially as his poetry comes to acquire a subtle patriotism.

Smoothly directed and impeccably designed and costumed, this is an earnest and sincere tribute to a thwarted talent (Dong-ju died in February 1945). Yet, despite the thoughtful performances of Kang Ha-neul and Park Jung-min, screenwriter Shin Yeon-shick (whose reputation as a director in his own right rests on such acclaimed arthouse outings as The Russian Novel, 2012) melodramatises too many key scenes, with the consequence that this feels increasingly detached from historical reality.

Completing this part of the programme is another biopic set during the occupation period that following the demise of the Joseon dynasty. Directed by Hur Jin-ho, The Last Princess has much in common (albeit on a more modest scale) with Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987) - which the 75 year-old Deok-hye might just have seen before her death in April 1989. Adapted by Hur, Lee Han-eol and Seo Yoo-min from a novel by Kwon Bi-young, this follows Choi Dong-hoon's Assassination (2015), Kim Jee-woon's The Age of Shadows and Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (both 2016) in exploring the Korean response to Japanese imperialism and why so many of the ruling élite were able to escape censure and retain their status following independence.

Princess Deok-hye suffered throughout her life. The youngest child of Emperor Gojong (Baek Yun-sik), the seven year-old witnessed him being poisoned in 1919. But she never forgot the affection he lavished upon her as he dealt with the ramifications of Japans forcible annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1905. Having being proclaimed queen, Deok-hye (Kim So-hyun) defies court functionary Han Taek-soo (Yoon Jea-moon) by refusing to wear a kimono during a formal ceremony. So, he arranged for her to be sent to Tokyo to complete her education.

Having presented these episodes in a prologue, Hur concentrates on the relationship that develops between Deok-hye (now played by Son Ye-jin) and Kim Jang-han (Park Hae-il), the son of court chamberlain Kim Hwang-jin (Ahn Nae-sang), whose betrothal to the young princess had been blocked by the Japanese. Despite serving with the imperial army, Kim is a member of the independence movement that has grown up around Deok-hye's nephew, Prince Yi Woo (Go Soo), who plots to smuggle his aunt and her half-brother, Crown Prince Yi Eun (Park Soo-young), to Shanghai.

However, Deok-hye is keen to return to Seoul, as her concubine mother, Yang Gui-in (Park Joo-mi) is dying and she is distraught at being denied permission before the funeral. She seeks solace in loyal lady-in-waiting, Bok-soon (Ra Mi-ran), and conveys her patriotic sentiments in a speech to some Korean slave labourers. But the treatment she receives from the Japanese affects her mental health and, although Kim tries to protect her, she is married to Count Takeyuki So (Kim Jae-wook) and gives birth to a daughter, Jong-hye (Lee Chae-eun).

Having spent much of the Second World War in institutions, Deok-hye divorces Takeyuki after he loses his peerage. However, in 1956, Jong-hye disappears and Kim (who is now in South Korea working as a journalist) begins to lobby President Rhee Sing-man to let Deok-hye return home. He fears that support for the royalist cause will rally round her, but finally agrees to end her exile in January 1962.

In fact, the journalist who negotiated the repatriation was Kim Eul-han, who went to Japan to track down Deok-hye and tell her story. But Hur and his fellow scribes were adapting a novel rather than sticking strictly to the facts and it neatly brings the love story full circle by having Kim bring his childhood fiancée back to her rightful home. Deok-hye spent the last 27 years of her life in the Changdeok Palace (where she had been born in 1912) and she is played with an affecting mix of spirit and vulnerability by Son Ye-jin, who had previously headlined Hur's April Snow (2005) and sank almost $1 million of her own money into the project.

There are times when Hur sentimentalises and over-simplifies the story. But he largely avoids the anti-Japanese bombast that has characterised so many Korean films about the occupation. Moreover, he stages the set-pieces with aplomb, while he and cinematographer Lee Tae-yoon make evocative use of Cho Hwa-sung's lavish production design. So, while it occasionally prioritises spectacle over authenticity and Hur allows Choi Yong-rak's strident score to dictate the tone of the more emotional scenes, this does a solid job of recreating the complexities of a fascinating period.

The critic Tony Rayns has selected the four titles in the Indie Firepower slot, which include Jeong Ga-young's Miss Ex (2016), a four-chapter monochrome comedy in which the debuting director also stars as a daytime drinker determined to win back her ex-boyfriend; Park Sang-hun's A Mere Life (2012), which sees video game addict Kim Min-hyuk attempt to poison wife Jang Liu and their young son after his bungled bid to buy a delivery truck threatens the future of his grocery store; and Park Hong-min's first feature, A Fish (2011), a homemade 3-D mystery about a private eye's effort to help a professor find the wife who has run away to become a shaman.

Park Hong-min is also represented by Alone, which bears the influence of Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan in its use of location and fragmented clues. As in Lee Kwang-kuk's A Matter of Interpretation (2014), stage actor Lee Ju-won finds himself adrift in a bemusing dreamscape. But this is a grittier noirish nightmare that only lets itself down with a rather telegraphed denouement.

While working in his studio in a labyrinthine district of Seoul, photographer Lee Ju-won sees a woman being beaten on a neighbouring rooftop. As he tries to take pictures, the hooded assailants spot him and gives chase. Waking naked in a back alley after being struck on the head with a hammer, Lee stumbles past a young boy brandishing a knife and a woman sobbing on some steps. However, he ignores them in his haste to get home. However, he finds a headless corpse on the floor and, as he tries to clean up the mess, he is set upon by the same gang.

Once again, Lee comes round in a sinuous passageway. But, this time, he is fully clothed and the sight of the strangers he had encountered previously prompts him to ponder the possibility that he is dreaming. Trapped between memory, his subconscious and waking reality, Lee sees his younger self overcoming a childhood trauma involving mother Yoon Young-min, while he also takes time to explore the reasons for the breakdown of his romance with Song You-hyun.

Pausing periodically to comment on the gentrification of Seoul's poorer districts (and contrast them with the inside of Lee's brain), Park generates plenty of unease as Lee tries to make sense of visions that could be recollections or premonitions. Employing just 37 cuts in the entire 90-minute film, Park keeps Kim Byeong-jung's camera moving through some ingenious long takes that reinforce both Lee's and the audience's sense of disorientation. The clues are there for the alert to anticipate the identity of the bloody cadaver, but Park sometimes succumbs to an over-cleverness that is entirely pardonable in such an audaciously ambitious conceit.

The subejct of this year's Classics Revisited retrospective is iconoclastic director Lee Chang-ho, who co-founded the Young Sung Shi Dae or Young Visual Age group that melded writers and artists, as well as stage and screen performers, in a bid to introduce the energy, emotion and experimentation of Free Cinema and the nouvelle vague into South Korean film. This brief homage centres on Good Windy Days (1980), a confrontational rite of passage that sees three country boys arrive in Seoul and discover a different and often bruising world; Eoh Wu-dong (1985), which was criticised for its exploitative account of a Joseon-era noblemans bid to kill the daughter (Lee Bo-hee) who shamed the family by becoming a courtesan; and The Man With Three Coffins (1987), which follows Kim Myung-kon's bid to scatter his wife's ashes in northern Korea and features Lee Bo-hee as the deceased spouse in flashback and as a prostitute and a nurse encountered en route.

The actor showcase is bestowed upon 69 year-old Baek Yoon-sik, who has largely specialised in character roles since making his screen debut in 1970. He is probably best known in this country for Jang Joon-hwan's debut, Save the Green Planet (2004), in which he plays the boss of a chemical company who is mistaken for an alien by beekeeper Shin Ha-kyun, who persuades girlfriend Hwang Jeong-min to help him abduct Baek in order to extract the royal genetic code that can avert a global catastrophe. Released the same year, Choi Dong-hoon's The Big Swindle saw Baek play a con man who is keen to beat his fellow crooks to the stash that Park Shin-yang managed to hide away before his death. But not only are the cops on Baek's tail, but his rivals are quite prepared to play dirty in their pursuit of the loot.

Baek changes tack again in Shin Han-sol's first feature, The Art of Fighting (2005), in which schoolboy Jae Hee grows tired of being bullied by his classmates and hectors Baek's legendary martial artist into giving him some tips on how to wreak his revenge. Yoon Yeo-jeong becomes determined to get her own back in Im Sang-soo's The Taste of Money (2012), after she learns that Baeks businessman husband has been having an affair with Filipina maid Maui Taylor. But sleeping with Baek's private secretary, Kim Kang-woo, fails to assuage her fury and, when she sets out to ruin her spouse when their son, On Joo-won, is accused of organising a slush fund for American tycoon Darcy Paquet and Kim cheats on her with daughter, Kim Hyo-jin.

This rollicking black farce makes a fine companion piece to Woo Min-ho's Inside Men, which is showing in the three-hour director's cut that helped make this one of the box-office hits of 2015. Based on a webcomic by manhwa artist Yoon Tae-ho, this savage satire on the unholy alliances being formed at the top of the South Korean establishment combines plenty of political chicanery with well-aimed swipes at the media and the mob and plenty of wit and debauchery.

Two years before the one-handed Lee Byung-hun exposed the $3 billion collusion between the Hanyul Bank, Mirae Motors and ambitious congressman Lee Kyoung-young, the retired gangster was angling to get hold of the documents being offered by Mirae accountant Ryu Tae-ho to crusading district attorney Cho Seung-woo, who resents the way he is treated by the élite because he attended a provincial university. But, while company boss Kim Hong-fa is confident that Lee will honour their friendship and hand over the incriminating papers about the slush fund, he passes a copy to Baek Yoon-sik, the editor of the right-leaning Kukmin Daily, who fancies himself as a power broker in the forthcoming presidential election.

Unfortunately, Kim doesn't appreciate Lee's stance on freedom of information and orders his henchmen to exact his pound of flesh. But this is just for starters, as Cho starts to unearth evidence linking Baek and Lee Kyoung-young, while Lee Byung-hun vows to ruin Kim and Baek for betraying him. However, it takes him some time to realise that his ends will be best served by joining forces with Cho. But their foes have no intention of backing down meekly and a titanic and often pitiless struggle ensues.

Woo Min-ho keeps a grandstanding twist close to his chest and, given the current unrest about the influence of Choi Soon-sil on President Park Geun-Hye, it's easy to see why this was such a domestic success. The ensemble acting is superb, with Baek blithely abusing the power of the press for his own ends, while Lee Byung-hun and Cho Seung-woo circle each other with macho cynicism before taking the leap of faith.

Some scenes are a little close to the knuckle - literally so when Lee smashes Ryu's fingers with a hammer while singing a syrupy folk song - but Woo handles the violence, intrigue and bleak humour with equal finesse. He and cinematographer Go Rak-seon also make oppressive use of the locations chosen by production designer Lee Min-soo, which reinforce the overall mood of shabbiness as the political system frays at the edges.

Finally, the Special Focus at LKFF 2016 is entitled `The Lives of Korean Women Through the Eyes of Female Directors'. Accompanying the selection is Yim Soon-rye's documentary, Keeping the Vision Alive: Women in Korean Film-making (2001), which leavens observations about making a mark in a male-dominated industry by the likes of Byun Young-joo and Jang Hee-sun with clips from landmark films.

Since Park Nam-ok became the first woman to make a feature with The Widow (1955), South Korean cinema has afforded women more opportunities to direct than any of its Asian competitors. Sadly, the ending is now missing to this starkly realist study of Korean War widow Lee Min-ja, who refuses to remain loyal to the memory of her fallen husband and sends her daughter to the country so she can pursue her interest in Lee Tack-yun. Sadly, the ending to this provocative saga has been lost and Park would never direct again, as she devoted herself to running a film magazine before emigrating to the United States (where she still lives) to join her own daughter (who was a baby bound to her mother's back during the shooting of the picture).

Made almost half a century later, Jeong Jae-eun's Take Care of My Cat (2001) follows the fortunes of five high school friends, as rebel Bae Du-na gravitates towards artist Ok Ji-yeong after Lee Yo-weon becomes preoccupied with her office workmates in Seoul. Jeong rather struggles to integrate half-Chinese twins, Lee Eun-sil and Lee Eun-ju, but this episodic snapshot offers intriguing insights into the status and expectations of twentysomething Korean women at the start of the new millennium.

Lee Jeong-hyang places her focus firmly on the age-gap in The Way Home (2002), as Dong Hyo-heui leaves young son Yu Seung-ho with mute grandmother Kim Eul-boon while she looks for a new job. Hating the countryside after living in Seoul, Yu is repeatedly insolent towards Kim, as he turns his nose up at her chicken soup and steals from her to buy batteries for his toys. But, as he comes to realise how dependent he is upon her, the seven year-old scamp starts to show some respect and affection.

The mood couldn't be more different in Yim Soon-rye's Forever the Moment (2007), which recalls the remarkable progress of the ageing Korean women's handball team at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The story centres on Han Mi-sook (Moon So-ri), a former ace who is plucked from her supermarket job to bolster the team after her husband abandons her with the debts from a failed business, and Kim Hye-kyung (Kim Jeong-eun), who is coaxed back from coaching in Japan only to clash with onetime star player Seong-Pi (Eom Tae-woong), whose new-fangled methods irk her as much as the fact that he's her ex-boyfriend. However, with Yim wisely paying as much attention to the players' personal problems as their on-court heroics, Oh Soo-hui (Cho Eun-ji) and Song Jung-ran (Kim Ji-yeong) also show well as the ditzy goalkeeper and unflinching hard case, who prove key to the ajumma or `housewife' squad's odyssey. Sports movie fans will have seen dozens of fotofit training montages and archly arty big-match reconstructions, and Yim has little to offer by way of innovations. But he sustains the tension of the gold medal game against Denmark, right down to the last twist of the penalty shoot-out.

We have already encountered Lee Kyoung-mi and her directorial debut, Crush and Blush (2008), is a touching comedy that follows hot-flushing Russian teacher Gong Hyo-jin to her new school, where she finds herself working alongside her old class crush, Lee Jong-hyuk. However, he is having an adulterous affair with a younger colleague and Gong teams up with his timid daughter, Seo Woo, to shatter the romance and teach Lee the value of fidelity. Seo Woo also shows to good effect in Park Chan-ok's Paju (2009), which takes its title from a rundown city near the 38th Parallel and centres on the thorny relationship between Seo Woo and brother-in-law Lee Sun-kyun, a teacher-turned-political activist with whom she starts falling in love, despite being convinced that he killed her sister Shim Yi-young for the insurance money.

Bribery and deception are to the fore in Helpless, documentarist Byun Young-joo's 2011 adaptation of Miyabe Miyuki's Japanese bestseller All She Was Worth, which follows veterinarian Lee Sun-kyun's attempts to explain the sudden disappearance of fiancée Kim Min-hee en route to meet his parents in the countryside. Returning to Seoul to find all traces of Kim removed from their apartment, he learns from banker Kim Min-jae that his beloved has a history of bankruptcies and defaulted loans and he asks dishevelled uncle Cho Sung-ha to help track her down using the skills he had employed as a cop before he was fired for corruption.

Taking on the topic of labour rights after exploring gender politics in Sisters on the Road (2009) and Moonwalk (2011), Boo Ji-young's Cart (2014) stands shoulder to shoulder with non-contract worker Yum Jung-ah after she is dismissed after five years (and shortly after being promised a promotion to a full-time post), and decides to throw in her lot with a union being organised by the uncompromising Moon Jeong-hee. By contrast, Jang Liu deserves to lose her job in Kim Soo-jung's A Blue Mouthed Face (2015) after she cheats her customers at a supermarket. But she also falls into a bad crowd at her new workplace and urges her ailing mother to leave home in order to boost the marital chances of her disabled brother, Jin Yong-uk.

While this tale ends in tragedy, Lee Hyun-ju's Our Love Story (2015) grounds itself in real life as it follows the shorts Distance and Ordinary Family (both 2014) in her bid to change Korean attitudes to LGBT issues. The story centres around introverted art student Lee Sang-Hee, who is preparing for her graduation show with her demanding tutor when she makes eye contact with the coolly assured barmaid Ryu Sun-Young while searching for materials in a Seoul junk shop. Although she has not dated boys, Lee has never considered herself to be a lesbian. But, when she bumps into Ryu again at a convenience store, she realises the strength of her attraction.

Ryu is also smitten and the pair become an item. Their friends are surprised by the intensity of their liaison, however, while Ryu comes under increasing pressure to find a husband after she is forced to move back home with her father. Lee also gets a reminder from her tutor that her infatuation with Ryu is distracting her from her project. But things start to unravel when Ryu (who has had girlfriends before) feels hemmed in by Lee's possessive passion and she struggles to find a way to let her down gently.

Played with touching sincerity by Lee and Ryu, this may not seem particularly groundbreaking to non-Korean viewers. But Lee Hyun-ju avoids Sapphic cliché in depicting a relationship between two ordinary women whose contrasting attitudes to life and love are also subject to more conservative outside influences. Nicely photographed without any soft-focus kitsch by Son Jin-yong, this is a down-to-earth picture that refuses to make a drama out of a same-sex crisis.