Wedding Dress

Kwon Hyung-jin's 2010 Korean film follows a wedding dress designer, given a terminal cancer diagnosis, trying to prepare her small daughter to live without her. The mother hides her illness from the child; the daughter, angry that her mother misses her ballet performance, and both of them live with what they cannot say. The film follows the familiar shapes of its genre and takes much of its emotional effect from them. What holds it up is the natural performance of Kim Hyang-gi, then a child actor, and the way the mother's profession is tied to the story: a woman who sews other people's happiest day sews her own farewell. The steering is overt and the music heavy. Who it's for: viewers who like Korean melodrama and mother and daughter stories. Who it's not for: anyone put off by emotional steering, or avoiding subjects of illness and death.