Gina Kim's first feature Invisible Light (2003) is a sensitive study of a love triangle among Koreans in California. Gah-in is having an affair with Do-hee's husband, but the futility of the liaison pushes her into isolation, depression, and anorexia. Estranged from her unfaithful mate and pregnant with another man's child, Do-hee returns from South Korea to visit her elderly grandmother.
Combining a minimum of dialogue with a subtly articulated range of sounds—the chewing of food, the rustling of bedsheets, the whir of a refrigerator—Kim quietly evokes intense, solitary suffering. The lead actresses, Yoon-sun Choi and Sun-jin Lee, are both first-rate. In English and subtitled Korean. 78 min.
—Joshua Katzman