Critic Reviews
| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
An unforgettable experience from yet another filmmaker who is making South Korean cinema one of the most vibrant of any emerging on the international scene.
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| 90 |
LA Weekly
At once a romantic melodrama, a sharp social comedy and a fierce political commentary on Korean society's cruelty to social outcasts. It's also a triumph of artistic indirection: Not a single scene plays out the way you expect. This is a film that gives humanism back its good name.
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| 90 |
Village Voice
Oasis is utterly beguiling because Lee, like many other percipient Asian filmmakers, is simply more attentive to his characters' emotional tumult than the audience's.
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| 88 |
New York Daily News
Director Lee Chang-Dong has boldly crafted a challenge rarely found on film. But if you choose to meet it, you'll be rewarded with one of the most original, indelible romances in recent memory.
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| 88 |
Boston Globe
Oasis is that rare miraculous whirlwind romance that moves from attempted rape to reverence without kicking up a lot of dust.
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| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
In a sense, Oasis is an unabashed tearjerker, but Lee keeps knocking the melodrama off-balance, making all the big emotional payoffs a little discomforting, because they're not that far removed from something really disturbing.
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| 80 |
The New York Times
The remarkable if overlong Korean film Oasis strips away much of the sentimentality and goody-two-shoes attitudes that the movies traditionally display toward disabled people.
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| 80 |
Variety
An eloquent expression of both unorthodox romance and bitter disillusionment with the hypocritical institutions of family and society.
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| 75 |
New York Post
You'll have to look long and hard to find a performance as emotionally raw as that of Moon So-ri in the startling South Korean love story Oasis.
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| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A brave film in the way it shows two people who find any relationship almost impossible, and yet find a way to make theirs work. The problems with the film come because it overstays its welcome.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
In the 2002 South Korean film Oasis, one can appreciate one of Asia's best directors (Lee Chang-dong) and one of the region's best actresses (Moon So-ri).
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| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Martin Rubin
Skating fearlessly on the edge of tastelessness and sentimentality, Oasis is another strong, provocative film by Lee Chang-dong.
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| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Although overlong and diffuse, Oasis, written and directed by Lee Chang-dong, boasts many powerful moments.
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| 50 |
TV Guide
The combination of Lee's discomforting subject matter and distancing style -- calculating artlessness punctuated by occasional flights of lyrical fantasy -- makes this slow-moving drama a challenge that doesn't seem entirely worth the effort.
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