Nothing much happens in this Korean film other than the changing of the seasons. But it is a healing process. Not so much for the characters in the film but for the audience. It is remarkable how the film does this in subtle quiet strokes. It sneaks up on you with friendships, conversations, cooking, eating and lyrical images of the countryside. Female director Yim Soon-rye patiently builds this mood one seed at a time, one meal at a time, one reflection at a time, one flashback at a time to create this spiritual connection to nature, to harmony, to what fills our needs. If people feel a bit battered by the world, by the division, by the antagonism, this will work its way into your soul and soothe it. Lower your blood pressure. And make you very hungry! Hunger is where the heart is and the heart is where home is. There is a lot of cooking and eating going on here and it is part of that healing process. It is done with such care as food is prepared and eaten with relish.


Hye-won (Kim Tae-ri in a wonderfully natural performance) has failed in her university exam in Seoul and decided to go stay at the home where she grew up. An isolated small rural house in the country in which it takes her 30-minutes to bicycle into the nearest town for provisions. Her mother (Moon So-ri) has left without much of an explanation and she is on her own. It is winter and cold with frost on the ground. With no food stocked up, Hye-won goes outside, digs up frozen cabbages and makes a soup that warms her and brings back memories. It is the beginning of her journey through cooking and finding herself. Two of her high school companions show up and renew their friendship. Their nights are passed in her home eating and talking. When the food is too spicy they cry, when they drink too much of her fermented alcohol, they laugh.


She begins to grow food for her recipes - onions, potatoes - and explains to us through her inner narrative exactly what she is doing. Gives us bits of wisdom - "if dried persimmons taste this good, it means it is deep into winter". "A ripe tomato can be thrown anywhere and the seeds will take root". The pacing is as lazy as a summer afternoon. Told in bits and pieces. Hye-won simply sitting on the steps with the fan blowing behind her and eating noodles. Or showing us the best way to grow sweet onions. The house has no internet, no tv - time passes the old fashioned way, through work, thought and friends.


Underneath all of this is her relationship with her mother and she often flashes back to scenes with her - of her mother cooking, talking about food and nature, of how to do things. Her father died when she was a child and it was her mother who brought her up in the country. She has absorbed it all. Her mother sends her a letter with no return address - all it has inside is a recipe for potato dumplings. She proceeds to make them. It feels so unusual to watch a film so at peace with it itself. There is no attempt at drama, no hysterics, no romance - just life walking by and a girl becoming through her own choices the woman her mother wants her to be. Independent, tough and a good cook! Have food on hand when you watch it. You will get hungry.