Peppermint Candy opens up on the severely disturbed Yong-ho wandering around a riverbank where a number of his friends appear to be having a 20-year reunion picnic. Much to their surprise, they spot Yong-ho, who doesn’t exactly join in on the fun. Instead, he climbs up on some nearby train tracks and gets hit by a train after making a determined exclamation that he is “going back.”
And cue the story’s shift to a reverse chronological narrative, visiting turning points of his life over the twenty years that precede the suicide. These include emotional ups and downs with his wife, his life as a police officer in the 80’s, an early traumatic experience as a soldier, and his first love. While the reversed order does present some degree of mystery regarding the catalyst for the shocking opening, director Lee Chang-dong uses the structure more for twisting our emotions as Gaspar Noe tried in Irreversible, than presenting Memento style thrills.
Yong-ho represents the everyday South Korean citizen and it’s here that Lee finds his most effective drama. The subject matter is hardly alienating for foreign audiences, though it often ties Yong-ho’s life with modern Korean history and society. The story is crafted with a simple realism to make this one average man’s life seems like a true and universal story. Sol Kyung-gu easily captures the wide range of emotions in his dynamic character from a tortured soul to an ambitious youth with dreams like any other. In addition, Moon So-ri gives a subtlety touching performance as Yong-ho’s first love.
Lee avoids the pitfalls of his debut film, Green Fish by solving the most glaring problem in his character drama: the characters. Young-ho is far more accessible than the lead of Green Fish despite Peppermint Candy’s nearly epic twenty-year span. Both films are simple tales of ordinary men, but Green Fish tries to tell a dramatic story in an alienating low-key style while Peppermint Candy seems to come around and accept that key elements of melodrama are sometimes needed for powerful moments. Of course, Lee is naturally wary of overdoing it and he finds an effective middle ground. While later parts of the plot seem to have holes as we skip around time so much, Yong-ho is a successful, anchoring main character that always keeps us with the stirring film.
Reviewed by Tarun
