A loan shark is forced to reconsider his violent lifestyle after the arrival of a mysterious woman claiming to be his long-lost mother.
The film is far from a masterpiece, despite its festival success, but it bristles with Kim's trademark anger and agony.
Surely one of the year’s worst.
Intense and unyielding, Pieta is the kind of film that sends sensitive audiences rushing towards the exit and yet for those who remain to the bitter end there is method in all of this savagery, purpose visible through the grey clouds of unrelenting bleakness.
While there's no doubting the style and panache of Kim's extreme cinema (which has run afoul of the censors' scissors in the past), his self-conscious excesses all too often undermine his work.
Violence and redemption (or just as often, the latter’s impossibility) are familiar territories for writer/director Kim Ki-duk, but rarely are they proffered so confrontationally, with semi-vérité camerawork purposefully underscoring the ugliness.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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