Secret Tears

Park's follow-up to the surprise hit Whispering Corridors is an ethereal not-quite-romance between recently divorced insurance investigator Ku-Ho (Kim) and a young girl he knocks down while driving home drunk in the small hours: the silent, amnesiac Mi-Jo (Yoon), who turns out to have supernatural powers. While Ku-Ho's colleagues fret over his apparent 'Lolita complex' and investigate Mi-Jo's shadowy background, Ku-Ho himself forms a tight, telepathic bond with the girl and resolves to protect her, even when male corpses start showing up in her vicinity. The investigation of Mi-Jo's secrets gives the film its structure and denouement, but the film is at least as much a study of Ku-Ho's middle-aged frustrations and anomie as it is a supernatural thriller. The two aspects don't fully mesh, resulting in slow patches, but much of it is engrossing, intriguing and finally rather moving.