MY HEART

A splendid central performance by actress and screenwriter Kim Yoomee charts the life-arc of a rural Korean woman, from stifled youth to spry country elder, bent and bruised but never broken by decades of a firm social order that treats women as property. In the 1920s (but it could well be the 1820s or the 1720s, given the attitudes and hardscrabble accoutrements) Soonie is wed at 16 in an arranged marriage to a wealthy boy literally half her age. Over the years hardworking Soonie earns even the appreciation and respect of her abusive mother-in-law – but she can't get pregnant and willingly removes herself from the household so that her now-adult husband may enjoy fatherhood with a mistress. Learning to be self-reliant and strong tempers Soonie against what is to come; fate (and alcohol) brings the indominable heroine a decent man in the form of a lusty, woodland potter; and fate (and alcohol) snatches him away. Finally taken in by a small family as “elder sister,” the childless Soonie experiences both the joy and pain of motherhood. As timeless as the poetic sagas Soonie recites to keep herself company, MY HEART will touch yours. (In Korean with English subtitles.)