Time: 130 Minutes
Age Rating: R16 – Violence, sexual material, suicide & offensive language
Cast:
Sul Kyung-gu as Kim Yong-ho
Moon So-ri as Yun Sun-im
Kim Yeo-jin as Hong-ja
Director: Lee Chang-dong

The main thing I knew about Peppermint Candy going was that it was from Lee Chang-dong, who directed a great movie called Burning. So for that alone, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, I have to say that Peppermint Candy didn’t work entirely for me, despite some really good aspects.

The main concept of Peppermint Candy is that the main character commits suicide in the opening scenes and then we observe a series of sections travelling back in time from that moment, showing this man’s life and what led him to take his own life. The idea of having a reverse chronological flashback story structure was interesting. Without going into depth as to who the main character is or what he does in this movie, he is very unlikable, and seeing him continually doing bad things was very difficult and uncomfortable to watch. So on top of learning why he kills himself, we also see what made him turn into who he is. I’m fine with watching hateable protagonists, however if you’re going to do that and attempt to explain why they are how they are, you better have a substantial, satisfying and plausible explanation. Peppermint Candy very much does go for the “one event causes the protagonist to completely change” route, and said event isn’t satisfying and didn’t really work. Not that it needed to completely justify his behaviors or actions, but it’s just not believable, and felt cheap and lazy. This is worsened by the fact that I just flat out wasn’t interested in him as a character. It’s very heavy handed in all aspects and all the emotion just feels forced without actually being hard hitting like it was intending to be.

Sol Kyung-gu does at the very least give a very committed performance in the lead role, even if I didn’t find his character to be that engaging.

Lee Chang-dong’s strong direction is the best part of the movie. The cinematography is great and I like the stylistic choices.

Peppermint Candy is heavy handed, melodramatic, unpleasant to watch and hard to be emotionally invested in. However, it is well directed and has an interesting narrative structure.