Peppermint Candy

A powerful work of Korean New Wave cinema and Lee’s second directorial feature, PEPPERMINT CANDY spans 20 years in the life of one man, Yongho, from his callow teens through his fraught, self-hating middle age. Presented in seven chapters in reverse-chronological order, the film begins with Yongho’s untimely suicide and ends with a first date full of the promise and verve of youth. The moments in between these events as seen through lens of Yongho’s life observe South Korea’s fraught political history during of late 20th century, and in turn elegize a generation of marginalized people with “a quiet, heartbreaking power...,” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times). An Official Selection of the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, and numerous other notable fests, it won the Special Prize of the Jury at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and also garnered critical acclaim from film critics such as Elizabeth Kerr of The Hollywood Reporter who said, “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."