In the face of stiff competition from America, the last few years have seen Korean film-makers move towards commercial product in the hope of keeping the country's cinema afloat. While it's nice to note that this strategy has succeeded, it's an even greater pleasure to discover that Lee Chang-Dong's Peppermint Candy contains no such compromises ­ the movie possesses all the exquisite qualities that made Korean art-house films such a hit on the festival circuit during the 1990s.

Peppermint Candy, which premiered at the Pusan Film Festival last year in a slightly different form, cleverly uses political themes to comment on the human condition. Running backwards like a time-bending clock, it starts with the suicide of a cruel police torturer who has become a businessman. It then backtracks through some important political events to show how a repressive right-wing government dehumanised the protagonist and turned him into a monster. Political events like the Kwangju massacre ­ in some respects, Korea's Tiananmen ­ are expertly and accurately sketched in, but the chief focus here is psychological rather than historical, and Lee takes great care to make sure that events elucidate, rather than overshadow, the development of his chosen anti-hero.

"Political history did not leave personal history alone, unrelentingly," says Lee, "bringing it on to the battleground of this disturbed time period. I don't go back in time for nostalgic reasons, nor do I place more importance on the past than the present. Rather, I see this as the chance for young people today to identify with the young of the past, and perhaps gain some wisdom from their predecessors."

Peppermint Candy is director Lee's second movie, following his gangland tale, Green Fish (1997). But the sensitivity of the film makes it more of a sister piece to his first outing as scriptwriter, Park Kwang-Su's To The Starry Island (1993). As in that film, the complex way in which realpolitik affects the individual is carefully, even gently, rendered.

"This is about cutting open this buried loss, about waking up lost time," says Lee. "We start in present day 1999, and then go back to 1979, to when a 20-year dictatorship had finally ended. Since then, life has greatly changed and living conditions have improved. But we Koreans have still not found happiness."

Richard James Havis