← Back to results
The Isle
섬
2000 90 min South Korea 18+
★6.9
Drama, Thriller
Director: Kim Ki-duk
Trailers
Description
Mute Hee-Jin is working as a clerk in a fishing resort in the Korean wilderness; selling baits, food and occasionally her body to the fishing tourists. One day she falls in love with Hyun-Shik, who is on the run from the police, and rescues him with a fish hook when he tries to commit suicide.
Budget:
$50,000
US Gross:
$20,666
Worldwide:
$24,963
Starring
Jung Suh
Actor
Kim Yu-seok
Actor
Cho Jae-hyun
Actor
Awards
Venice Film Festival 2000
— NETPAC Award – Special Mention
Venice Film Festival 2000
— Golden Lion
Key opinion
Kim Ki-duk's 'The Isle' is a polarizing, visually evocative drama that uses a remote, floating lake setting to explore themes of obsessive love and existential suffering. While many praise its masterful use of symbolism and atmospheric power, others find the narrative logic inconsistent and the provocative imagery excessive.
| Production | The film utilizes the floating resort as a central, meticulously constructed metaphor for the characters' internal psychological states and isolation. | |
| Direction | Kim Ki-duk employs minimal dialogue and relies on powerful visual storytelling, often compared to silent cinema, to convey raw human emotion and animalistic instinct. | |
| Cinematography | The water, landscapes, and weather function as active, symbolic characters that anchor the film's meditative and melancholic atmosphere. | |
| Emotion | The film’s focus on intense, unconventional, and often violent manifestations of love creates a visceral and thought-provoking, albeit disturbing, emotional impact. | |
| Screenplay | The narrative is divided between those who find the characters' irrational, impulsive actions to be a profound reflection of the death drive and those who criticize the plot as being logically inconsistent and melodramatic. |