I first reviewed "Flower Island" two months ago, after seeing it twice at the Rotterdam Festival. I'm going to do it again now because my recent viewing at Bruges convinced me that it's the sort of film that deserves to be plugged mercilessly. It's the most cathartic thing I have come across in a long time, which is saying something, given my craving for soul-purging experiences. And since I believe that others might respond just as emotionally to the movie if they only knew it existed, I'm going to tell you again why this is a brilliant film and why you should move heaven and earth to see it.

"Flower Island" is a road movie in which three traumatised women travel to an island where pain and sorrow are supposed to be cured. The first, Oknam, is a housewife who prostitutes herself in order to buy a piano for her daughter. When a client dies on top of her, she rings the police, who in turn contact her unsuspecting husband. Having been told to stay away from home for a while, Oknam sets out for an island in the South where she wishes to visit a friend and hopes to come to terms with recent events. On the way to the island, she hooks up with a teenager called Hyena who has just aborted her baby in a public loo and is now looking for her mother, who abandoned her when she was a baby. The two of them then run into Yoojin, a sensitive and rather religious singer who has been diagnosed with cancer of the vocal cords and has been given a brutal choice: either to have her tongue removed within a week or to die. Thrown into a state of emotional torpor, Yoojin leaves home and drives around in a daze, until Oknam and Hyena take pity on her and drag her with them to the island. Together, the three women embark on a journey which, rather than helping them beat the odds, teaches them to accept their fates, which are depicted with heart-breaking tragic beauty.

"Flower Island" is memorable for many reasons. Quite apart from having the most haunting soundtrack I've heard, it succeeds in blending realism, lyricism and fairy-tale-like qualities in a way I've never encountered before. When Oknam first brings up Flower Island, one is inclined to believe she is talking about a mythical island - a feeling reinforced by her referring to her friend on the island as her "angel friend." Yet for all the surreal touches, the first half of the film has a profoundly realistic character. It isn't until the women reach the port from which boats for the island are said to depart that the film assumes its other, more lyrical form, and it is here that one realises just how brilliant it is. A synthesis of sound and vision which manages to be emotional and intensely serene at the same time, the final half hour is an ode to love, faith and acceptance which features moments of staggering beauty - moments that lodge themselves in one's soul and come to the surface in times of loneliness and despair, convincing one that there might be a God after all and that life might just have a meaning. It is mentioned right in the first minute of the film, and God, is it illustrated beautifully thereafter.

I could go on for hours about the extraordinary performances in the film, or about the depth Song Ilgon brings to his story. About the characters the three women meet on the way, who seem to personify the notion that love hurts and that one is better off without it, except that this is diametrically opposed to the final message of the film, which appears to be that sharing traumatic experiences can help one get over them. About the mysterious touch added by the fact that one actor plays two parts. About the Ricky Fitts-like way Hyena goes about filming everything around her - her abortion, a peacock (an animal believed to fend off evil in East Asian lore), the symbolic river running below the frozen surface and, naturally, her fellow travellers. About the absolutely stunning (but credible) way Hyena bounces back from her setbacks, turning from troubled teenager to buoyant child within a matter of seconds not once but several times. About the symbolic pair of wings she carries with her, which pops up several times in the film's more emotional scenes and fits in wonderfully with the references to God and angels. About the way Oknam, who initially strikes one as an annoying character, gradually wins the viewer's sympathy, transforming in the end into the kind of mother figure everyone would wish to have in their lives. About Yoojin's tragedy, which is made so tangible that one cries for emotion when she, who seems vacant for most of the film, finally finds something to smile about. About the dark-and-light symbolism which permeates the film, resulting in some of the most haunting images ever put on screen. But since I can't go on forever, I'll just point out the phenomenal role music plays in the film. In a movie in which virtually every character is in some way linked to music, the soundtrack is of course pivotal, and "Flower Island"'s is simply brilliant. From the two songs Yoojin sings (the first an operatic song about the darkness surrounding her, set to the stirring tones of the adagio from Rachmaninov's second piano concerto; the second a short but poignant German song which roughly translates as "Thank you for loving me") to the absolutely haunting cello music that accompanies much of the second half, "Flower Island" possesses a musical beauty that keeps me up at night. Combined with the simple but astonishingly effective cinematography, it makes for a next-to-unbeatable emotional experience, without any of the false sentiment that passes for emotion in Hollywood.

As is often the case with films this lyrical, "Flower Island" isn't for everyone. In the three times I've seen the film, I've heard people pan it because they couldn't deal with the flashforwards (which are confusing at first but make total sense afterwards) or because Oknam's whiny way of speaking annoyed them. I've seen others, seemingly unaffected by the emotional intensity of the film, leave screenings without a clue as to what they had just seen ("I don't get it - does she die or not?"). I have even, horror of horrors, heard people describe it as a "nice film," which is about the most insulting thing you can say about a film as profoundly stirring as this. Thankfully, however, I have also met people who were completely blown away by it, as I was the first two times I saw it. At my Bruges screening, the man sitting next to me wept openly during the women's transport to the island, which he called "a brilliant example of how simple images and well-chosen music can be combined to convey emotions that cannot be described in words." It's a fitting description of the film as a whole, which I will gratefully borrow here.

"A brilliant example of how simple images and well-chosen music can be combined to convey emotions that cannot be described in words." That's "Flower Island" in a nutshell, and it's a gem.

THE BUTTERFLY (Moon Seungwook, 2001)