Marie Kreutzer, who has been a prolific filmmaker in the past few years, has returned with a new feature that is a period drama. Inserting contemporary ballad music and boldly drawing on early forms of film, she focuses on the social status, and survival of women in 1877 Vienna. Empress Elisabeth is celebrating her fortieth birthday. Although she once dominated the trends in Europe, she now must face the threat of being deemed an old woman. She tightens her corset, loses weight, and travels abroad, but it is impossible to turn back time and regain her beauty and youth. Corsage is a record of a woman with a wounded spirit who finds herself lost at the threshold of modernity. “As Tears Go By” evokes deep sorrow and the requiem in the solemn ending takes our words away, we ask whether the women of the twenty-first century still face such critical scrutiny. Corsage is a monumental women’s film. (LEE Yong Cheol)