Harmony

Jeong-hye is serving ten years for killing the husband who abused her. She was pregnant when arrested and gives birth to her son in prison. Under the law the child can stay with her only for eighteen months, after which he will be given up for adoption. To get one day outside with him, Jeong-hye starts a choir in the women's wing and sets her sights on the national competition. The choir is trained by an inmate under sentence of death. The film sets out openly to make you cry and does not pretend otherwise; it sold more than three million tickets in Korea and was among the most watched releases of its year. Each of the women in the choir gets her story told in brief, and most of them have to do with violence done to them. The older inmate played by Na Moon-hee is the film's centre of gravity. Kang Dae-gyu works the emotional effect for everything it has, but the choir scenes are not decoration; they are the narrative itself.