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‘The South Korean city of Gyeongju is known for its hundreds of burial mounds, making this town with its head in the past a fitting backdrop for director Zhang Lu’s exquisitely observed personal drama. Inspired by an obscene painting the Chinese-Korean helmer once spotted on the wall of a local teahouse, Gyeongju follows a young(ish) man’s search for the same naughty artwork — a curious quest with bemusing consequences.

More concerned with immaterial memories than anything that can be directly captured onscreen, this ruminative offering plays almost like an existential ghost story. Returning to his old haunts after seven years, soft-spoken Choi Hyeon (The Host’s Park Hae-il) is troubled not by evil spirits, but by lingering questions from his past — subtle, impossible-to-articulate feelings that compel the mild-mannered college professor, who is visiting from Beijing for a colleague’s funeral, to make a one-night detour through nearby Gyeongju.

Though the camera hovers at a disembodied distance for much of the film, panning slowly from side to side on occasion but seldom pushing in, we’re firmly planted in Hyeon’s head for the entire trip. Bathed in radiant sunshine yet not quite impervious to melancholy, it’s a perfectly wonderful place to spend 145 minutes — the cinematic equivalent of a good Haruki Murakami novel, complete with a few delicately supernatural touches.’ The Hollywood Reporter

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