70
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The extravagance of the sets and costumes increases the theatricality; Chunhyang is an almost childlike delight for the eyes.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
This astoundingly beautiful Korean production is poignant, original, and engrossing.
90
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
A three-ring circus of visual pleasure, showing us the beauty of Korean garment, custom and national character.
88
It's sweeping yet intimate, stately yet impassioned, stylized yet immediate.
80
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
All the backing-and-forthing between olden and modern days intensifies the emotional impact of a compelling story, and underlines the enduring power of narrative itself.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Im Kwon Taek's exquisite Chunhyang brings to the screen one of Korea's most cherished folk tales, a timeless romance in which the lovers are challenged by differences in class.
70
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Im's movie approaches a seething, primitivist beauty that evokes Makhmalbaf and parallels the contrapuntal textual investigations of Resnais.
100
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
A spectacular, engrossing, big-hearted film based on one of Korea's great national epics and made by that country's top filmmaker.
80
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
The Korean director im Kwon-Taek has made more than 90 films since his first in 1962, and perhaps this explains why his latest, Chunhyang, seems so effortless and masterly. Based on a highly popular eighteenth-century Korean folktale, it's a movie that, stylistically, mixes the traditional with the avant-garde; the narrative may be ritualistic, but there's a let's-try-it-on-for-size friskiness to the filmmaking.
88
Miami Herald by Sara Wildberger
As magical as "The Wizard of Oz," the film leaves its spare setting and blooms into action in a colorful springtime world to tell the story of an epic romance lush with silken costumes, giggling courtesans, comic servants and rulers cruel and compassionate.