AllMovie

Following up on his hallucinatory meditation on sex, death, and fish hooks in The Isle, Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk spins this brutal exploration on the lingering anger and exploitation of America's occupation of South Korea. Even though all her letters are returned stamped "Address Unknown," a middle-aged woman nevertheless compulsively writes letter after letter to the American soldier with whom she bore an African-American/Korean child. Her son, named Chang-guk, is the object of societal scorn and rejection and can only get a job as a dog butcher, a job he executes with a certain amount of grim pleasure. He finds himself attracted to a high school girl with a degenerative eye condition who is trapped in an abusive relationship with an American G.I. His love for the girl and his free-floating rage against society fuels a violent outburst that changes everyone's lives. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.