CASTAWAY ON THE MOON (Korea, 2009)
Directed by: Lee Hey-Jun
Starring: Jung Jae-Yeong, Jung Rye-Won

Yesterday, Mr. Kim was just another victim of the global recession.  Strangled by debt, he leapt from a bridge into the Han River, praying for death.  Surprise! Instead he washes up alive and well on a tiny strip of land in the middle of the river. 911 won't believe him, his ex won't take his calls, and even the telemarketers won't let him get a word in edgewise. Oh, and he can't swim.  With Seoul just a few hundred meters away, he might as well be in the middle of the ocean. Forced to live on the island, nests in a paddleboat shaped like a giant duck, forages for harvest-ready seeds in bird poop and slowly comes to realize that his exit from the rat race may be the best thing that's ever happened to him.

Back on dry land, Ms. Kim is a traumatized agoraphobe, a right-clicking blog bandit who electronically appropriates other people's lives to fill the chasm in her own.  Sleeping in a bubble-wrapped closet, texting her parents instead of opening her bedroom door, she's alone in the crowd and she likes it that way, only able to bear the outside world during civil defense drills, when life freezes in place, and the silence of the moon falls upon Earth.  But everything changes when she's looking out her telescope and sees "Help" written in giant letters on the beach of an island in the Han River. Kim meets Kim, beginning the strangest, coolest courtship in cinema history.

Take our word for it: you've never seen a desert island film like this before.  Lee Hey-Jun (LIKE A VIRGIN) employs magical realism and a rude sense of mischief to breathe dizzying life into a profound character piece that draws on the collective mania of the recession-era zeitgeist, forcing you to laugh while also choking on your tears.  Couple that with stunning career-best performances from Jung Jae-Young (PUBLIC ENEMY 3) and Jung Rye-Won, and you've got the first, most honest love story of the new millennium.  This isn't a film about people removed from life, it's about the way we choose to live.  Take a trip across the Han River to the island that nobody knows, and you'll learn why joy is in the blare of an air raid siren, and why black bean noodles are the taste of hope