Poetry -- Film Review

CANNES -- Rhyming couplets, rather than religion, is the opium of an old lady beset by Alzheimer's and a family crisis in Lee Chan-dong's companion piece to "Secret Sunshine." While both films feature maternal figures whose lives are derailed by tragedies they cannot help, "Poetry's" tone and emotions are so painfully muted, its style so elliptical and Lee's exploration of the function of art in a morally vacuous society so ambivalent that it makes for extremely difficult and challenging viewing.