Mr. Lee, the director of a crematorium, has spent his entire life working there, seeing the dead off on their final journey. Now, sensing that his own time to depart has come, he returns to the crematorium where he worked for so long, only to find no one particularly glad to see him. In the midst of all this, Lee himself suddenly dies. Astonishingly, no matter how they try to cremate his body, it simply will not burn. The Flower, director Kim Si-jin’s debut feature, is a solemn drama about the raw, ugly sides of people laid bare in the face of death, bitter quarrels and vicious infighting, and unresolved memories of the past. In particular, Lee’s aching longing for his beloved, whom he hopes to meet again even if only as a spirit, deepens the film’s emotional intensity. Above all, the painstaking craftsmanship of the stop-motion animation is remarkable. The animation is all the more endearing for the way it conveys the same diligence and steadfastness embodied by Mr. Lee himself. (JEONG Jihye)