Breathless

Breathless is a bleak, relentless and emotionally raw movie from South Korea. An uncompromising look at the violent underbelly of a section of poverty ridden urban South Korea, Breathless is the directorial debut of lead man and scriptwriter Yang Ik-joon, and has rightly been bestowed with a healthy array of awards.

As the films pace allows layers to build and relationship dynamics to be understood and interwoven, nausea and discomfort evolves into empathy and worry, characters you are sure are irredeemable surprise you. The shaky documentary style photography adds to the grittiness and rawness.

Breathless is stark, dark and uncompromising. Well directed and with expertly judged emotional performances, this film has dared to expose the terrible unbreakable cycle of violence in an apparently progressive and evolved society. JM