NORTH KOREA | 121 minutes | 1972
The reminiscences of a man who regrets his past transgressions and pines for his true love. She is more resilient, however, having long since chosen to work alone for the common good. A Bellflower deals with sacrifice (unsurprisingly, a recurring theme in North Korean cinema) through a melodrama about love and regret. It draws odd parallels to La Fontaine’s fable, La cigale et la fourmi (The Cricket and the Ant), bizarrely revisited by a romanticism that marches to the beat of communist propaganda. A real oddity. ? Julien Fonfrède
No biography
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