An original idea that I can't recall seeing anywhere else: PEPERMINT CANDY's story actually goes in reverse, but not through the flashbacks or the film being run backwards. In seven stages, from 1999 back to 1979, a viewer finds out not only about a grim & brutal personal destiny of the central character Young-Ho, but a lot about the South Korean politics and society in its turbulent past. In the case of this film there'd be a true nasty spoiler if I told you what happened last: but it is definitely worth waiting until the very end. An intelligent cinematic exposition of the irreversible laws of Karma applying to all of us. It takes a while to get adjusted to this reversal of the cause and effect because of our natural conditioning: our natural expectation is what happens next or after. Here only what happens before matters and it matters profoundly because once done the action cannot be revoked or changed. It must have been quite a challenge to make a coherent and convincing story of the script. At the end there were no loose ends or contradictions and it seemed that all the jigsaw pieces fitted perfectly.
Review of Peppermint Candy
