Festival

Odd there should be two major Korean films centred on funerals in the same year, but this one is very different in form, tone and style from Farewell My Darling, even if it also shows a family at risk of tearing itself apart. Im directs with his usual classical restraint and places great weight on the many rituals that form part of the ceremonies; the beauty and serenity of these customs ultimately see the mourners through the parade of bad behaviour, drunken outbursts and hitherto unvoiced resentments. One element marks it as Im's most experimental film in some time: the story is filtered through glimpses of a child's picture-book vision of the death of her grandma - arresting, stylised sequences whose meaning falls into place only at the very end.