Flower Island

Flower Island, a Korean road movie to a mythical island, is a typical example of the vitality and innovation of today’s (South) Korean Cinema. Song Il Gon caught the eye two years ago in Cannes with his beautifully stylised and gripping short film The Picnic, about a family on the brink of collective suicide (screened in 2000 in Rotterdam). In his feature début, premièred in Venice, that impact has been preserved, but the style is radically different. He chose to use a digital camera, resulting in direct, improvised and sketchy shots, in which the editing phase was decisive for the look of the film. The acting is fantastic and Song succeeded wonderfully in giving the film the tension and construction the subject deserved.On a winter’s day, three young women meet: a girl aged 16 having an abortion in a public toilet, a singer with throat cancer and a prostitute turning her back on her profession. One of them proposes going to Flower Island, a spot where all pain and sadness will disappear. On the way, they have all kinds of unexpected experiences and start realising that the journey itself, and their mutual solidarity, can heal their inner wounds.