This debut narrative feature by Gina Kim employs a structuralism reminiscent of Chantal Akerman's films, with beautifully balanced compositions-held for sometimes excruciating lengths-that form an absorbing diptych about two troubled Korean women.
One is a binge-eating, weight-fixated L.A. college student; the other is a newly pregnant, middle-aged woman who's just returned to Korea after a long absence. Although their stories unfold on different continents, each character finds herself, in different ways, imprisoned by domestic spaces and embroiled in a love-hate relationship with her own body. Other, fragmentary narrative connections gradually emerge, but Kim's primary focus remains her exploration of a woman's-any woman's-struggle to define herself in an image-obsessed, male-centric culture.
—Scott Foundas (June 18-24, 2004)