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"Hyunshik, an ex-cop in deep pain and on the lam, arrives at the end of his road, an isolated lake dotted with floating huts, serving as a retreat for fishing and a host of sordid activities. Its beautiful but elusive proprietor, Heejin, never speaks, even when supplementing her income by performing sexual favours for her unsavoury guests. Her approach to Hyunshink is predatory. The Isle is a surreal, perverse love story - each emotion boiled down to its most shocking and exaggerated core. Jealousy, lust, revenge and betrayal are played out amid the serene setting of lake and marsh, pitting all that is raw, human and flawed against a backdrop of exquisite natural beauty.
"Director Kim Ki-Duk paints indelible images - a layering of metaphors. Hardly a line is spoken as the two characters challenge each other with their painful and bloody antics. You are left with a sense of triumphant survival, a witness to something at once monstrous and momentous." - Sundance Film Festival
"A gorgeously restrained, apocalyptically horrifying pas de deux." - Village Voice